Describing one of those topics on her AFR show, host Jenna Ellis read from an exclusive Axios story. The story describes a feud between Alina Habba, the former attorney for Donald Trump, and Trump advisor Ric Grenell. Their feud is over a multi-million-dollar donation from her husband, intended for the Kennedy Center, that Habba alleges Grenell never deposited.
The allegation itself is a serious one, Ellis said, but the bigger issue is people within the Trump administration fighting their battles using liberal news media, such as Axios, that is happy to print it.
“These are people from the left who want to smear and malign the White House, and anyone associated with President Trump at all,” Ellis told her audience. “So why give them any ammo?”
Gerard Filitti, an attorney with The Lawfare Project, told Ellis the Habba-Grenell feud is a “major P.R. problem” because it pulled in the U.S. president.
“These are two Trump loyalists, who could have had a conversation in private, not even involving the president,” he said. “Yet, somehow, it ends up both in the Oval Office and now on Axios.”
The way that happened, Filitti concluded, is through a White House leak that chose to use Axios as the source to air a political battle.
Ellis, who is Trump’s former attorney, said the news media is being used for a reason. It is well known inside the White House, she shared, that President Trump reacts to news and news headlines.
“It was just known that the best way to get his attention overall on something,” Ellis said, “is to go to the media and have him read it in print.”
That insider peek from Ellis was demonstrated in recent days from The Wall Street Journal, when it published a series of stories about Kimberly Guilfoyle and wealthy lobbyists.
The damning allegations about Guilfoyle, which were leaked to the Journal and packaged into a series of damning stories, ended with Trump demanding her resignation as U.S. ambassador to Greece.
Reacting to Guilfoyle’s resignation, maritime expert John Konrad wrote on X one reason she was targeted is her maritime-related work in Greece on behalf of the Trump administration.
“Greece owns more ships than any other country, and China owns several key ports in Greece,” Konrad wrote. “My sources say Guilfoyle has been doing fantastic work aligning those interests with the United States.”
Who targeted Guilfoyle is still unknown, Konrad wrote, but he alleges her ouster couldn’t have been done without media leaks to take her down.
“The BIG problem is what happens when an administration starts caving to mainstream media hit pieces,” he wrote. “Every scalp emboldens the press to hunt bigger game.”
Back on the AFR morning show, Ellis complained the Habba-Grenell feud is blowing up just two weeks before the midterm elections.
“Instead of focusing on that, we're now distracted by who did what to whom,” Filitti stated. “It’s like kindergarten tattletaling in the Oval Office, which is not what we want to see in the press.”
