Desiree L.Grace Fired by Trump Before Getting Job Appointed by 15 judges, Says She is Staying
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New York Times
A veteran New Jersey prosecutor who was appointed as the next U.S. attorney by federal judges in the state said Wednesday that she was prepared to take the job, even though she had been fired the day before by senior Justice Department officials.
The prosecutor, Desiree Leigh Grace, made the statement in a LinkedIn post, calling it an honor to have been selected for the position “on merit” and saying that she was ready to begin to serve “in accordance with the law.”
ImageA LinkedIn page shows Desiree Grace’s photo, profile and posts.
Desiree L. Grace’s LinkedIn page.Credit...via LinkedIn
Ms. Grace’s post extended the remarkable standoff between federal officials in New Jersey and Justice Department officials in Washington over who should lead the U.S. attorney’s office in the state.
The person currently in the role, Alina Habba, was formerly President Trump’s personal lawyer. She is serving in an interim, 120-day capacity that ends this week. In just a few months on the job, Ms. Habba has drawn considerable criticism for high-profile prosecutions of Democratic officials in the state. And while Mr. Trump nominated Ms. Habba for the job permanently, her confirmation faces headwinds in the Senate.
On Tuesday, after the judges announced Ms. Grace’s appointment to replace Ms. Habba, Justice Department officials in Washington reacted by summarily firing Ms. Grace.
The deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, accused the judges of playing politics and said that Ms. Grace had been removed “pursuant to the president’s authority.”
In the LinkedIn post, Ms. Grace did not mention her firing explicitly, though it read as something of a farewell to her law enforcement partners, whom she thanked.
“I’ve dedicated my career to public service because I always believed that I could make a difference. And as I sit here now and reflect, I believe we did that,” she wrote, adding, “Politics never impacted my work at the Department.”
But she concluded on a defiant note, noting that she had been named U.S. attorney by a judicial order.
“I’m prepared to follow that Order and begin to serve in accordance with the law,” she wrote.
Only President Trump has the power to remove U.S. attorneys who have been appointed by judges. And it was unclear whether he had exercised that authority, in spite of the messages officials in his administration posted on social media.
Asked late Wednesday whether the president had fired Ms. Grace, a spokesman for the Justice Department said that she “was never appointed by President Trump to be U.S. attorney.”
Until Tuesday, Ms. Grace served as the top deputy to Ms. Habba, who had no prosecutorial experience before Mr. Trump named her to the role. Ms. Habba’s term ends Friday, according to Mr. Blanche.
After the district court judges bypassed Ms. Habba and named Ms. Grace to the job instead, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, wrote on the social media platform X that the Justice Department “does not tolerate rogue judges,” suggesting that the judges’ role in the process was unusual.
It is not.
Between 2007 and last year, federal judges appointed 48 U.S. attorneys to permanent roles, according to research by Lauren Mattioli, a Boston University political science professor, and Jennifer Selin, a professor at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.
Of these, 30 were already serving as either interim or acting U.S. attorneys when named to the permanent post by judges; 18 were selected by the judges, as Ms. Grace was.
“We are in an area of law that’s incredibly complicated,” Professor Selin said. “But ‘it’s complicated’ doesn’t make a good tweet.”
Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that the social media messages from officials in Mr. Trump’s Justice Department were, at best, misleading.
“It’s an effort to make something that is entirely consistent with historical practice look shady, and to make the nefarious actors look like the district courts," he said, “and not the White House.”
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