Show Down in NJ Over Trump Going Over Judges Head for Removing Habba as Fed Attorney
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| President Trump appointed Alina Habba, one of his former personal lawyers, to serve as New Jersey’s interim U.S. attorney in March.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times |
ALINA HABBA: Sone of TRump's Attorney when he was found guilty of 34 counts and made into an indicted felon. Before Trump Sent her to NJ as interim Fed Prosecutor, She was going to turn NJ into Red state from Blue, indicating she was not going to serve all but the people of her Party.
The New York Times
The leadership of the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey was thrown into confusion on Tuesday as top Justice Department officials pushed back after federal judges in the state moved to appoint a new U.S. attorney.
The panel of federal judges rejected Alina Habba’s bid to stay in the job as the state’s U.S. attorney. Instead, they invoked a rarely used power to select a candidate of their own, Desiree Leigh Grace, an experienced prosecutor whom Ms. Habba had named as her first assistant soon after she took over as interim U.S. attorney in March.
But the attorney general, Pam Bondi, responded Tuesday evening with a social media post defending Ms. Habba and saying that the first assistant — Ms. Grace — “has just been removed.”
“This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers,” Ms. Bondi wrote.
The deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, also attacked the judges on social media, saying that they had colluded with New Jersey’s Democratic senators, who have opposed Ms. Habba.
“This backroom vote will not override the authority of the Chief Executive,” he said.
Ms. Grace was sent an email Tuesday informing her that she had been fired, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The rapid sequence of events raises the prospect of yet another confrontation between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary. Ms. Grace’s firing from the office may not nullify the judges’ decision to appoint her as the New Jersey U.S. attorney, but it is unclear whether the judges will be able to enforce their appointment.
The judges’ decision, made after a private vote on Monday, had raised the possibility that the New Jersey U.S. attorney would be an outlier in a Justice Department in which Mr. Trump has insisted on loyalty. Ms. Grace, were she to become the U.S. attorney, would still have to answer to top Justice officials in Washington — but the response from those officials on Tuesday seemed to indicate that even the prospect of leadership from someone who was not hand-selected by the president was unacceptable.
The district’s chief judge, RenĂ©e Marie Bumb, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed the order appointing Ms. Grace. After Ms. Bondi fired Ms. Grace, Judge Bumb said through an aide that “the court will have no comment.”
New Jersey’s two Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, said that the Justice Department was “continuing a pattern of publicly undermining judicial decisions and showing disregard for the rule of law and the separation of powers.”
“This administration may not like the law, but they are not above it,” the senators said in a statement on Tuesday night.
“The people of New Jersey deserve a U.S. attorney who will enforce the law and pursue justice for the people of our state without partisanship or politics.”
Ms. Grace has been a prosecutor in the Newark office since 2016, according to her LinkedIn profile. She rose quickly in the last five years, moving from acting chief of the office’s violent crimes unit in August 2020 to chief of the office’s criminal division in March 2024.
In their order appointing Ms. Grace, the judges said it became effective either as of Tuesday or upon the expiration of the 120 days of Ms. Habba’s term.
That wording reflected a lack of clarity as to when Ms. Habba’s 120-day term expires. President Trump named her on March 24, saying her ascension to the post was “effective immediately” — suggesting that her term expired on Tuesday. But Ms. Habba was sworn in at the White House four days later. Counting from that date, she may still have several days in her post.
It was soon clear that the Justice Department would not accept the judges’ decision willingly. Earlier Tuesday, Mr. Blanche wrote that the district court judges were “trying to force out” Ms. Habba “before her term expires at 11:59 p.m. Friday.”
Apparently ignoring that the judges had indicated that they were unsure as to when Ms. Habba’s term ended, Mr. Blanche accused them of executing “a left-wing agenda.”
The president, who selected Ms. Habba for the position, has assumed closer control of the Justice Department than any other president in the past half-century.
About an hour before Ms. Bondi’s social media post, Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said that the president had “full confidence in Alina Habba, whose work as acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey has made the Garden State and the nation safer.”
He added that the administration was looking forward to Ms. Habba’s confirmation in the U.S. Senate. He did not respond to follow-up questions about why he expected Ms. Habba to be confirmed, given that New Jersey senators have signaled that they would try to block her confirmation.
A similar showdown took place last week in a federal prosecutors’ office in Albany, N.Y. There, after judges refused to extend the temporary term of John A. Sarcone III, another embattled top prosecutor appointed by Mr. Trump, the Justice Department named him “special attorney” to Pam Bondi, the attorney general.
The appointment gave Mr. Sarcone the powers of a U.S. attorney and is “indefinite,” according to a letter from the Justice Department’s human resources division that was obtained by The New York Times.
Ms. Habba, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, had no experience as a prosecutor or in criminal law before the president appointed her to the temporary post.
Earlier this month, Mr. Trump nominated Ms. Habba to remain U.S. attorney permanently. But her confirmation faced headwinds in the U.S. Senate after Senators Booker and Kim said she had pursued “frivolous and politically motivated prosecutions” and “did not meet the standard” to become a U.S. attorney.
Ms. Habba is one of several of Mr. Trump’s former defense lawyers to serve in top Justice Department positions. And she has used the traditionally nonpartisan position to pursue several investigations into prominent Democrats.
Less than two months into her tenure, Ms. Habba, 41, charged Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark and Representative LaMonica McIver, both Democrats, after a clash with federal immigration agents outside a detention center they were seeking to tour in Newark.
Ten days later, Ms. Habba moved to drop the trespassing charge Mr. Baraka faced — a sequence of events that led a federal court judge to publicly criticize decision makers in the office. Mr. Baraka is now suing Ms. Habba for malicious prosecution.
Ms. Habba had also directed prosecutors in her office to investigate New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Philip D. Murphy, and the state’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, over a policy that limits how much help local police can provide federal immigration officers.
It is not unheard-of for district court judges to appoint interim U.S. attorneys to the job permanently. That’s what happened in 2018, during Mr. Trump’s first term as president, when New Jersey judges named Craig Carpenito, then the interim U.S. attorney, as the state’s top federal prosecutor.
Across the river, in the Southern District of New York, judges voted unanimously in 2018 to install Geoffrey S. Berman as U.S. attorney. (Mr. Berman was later fired by Mr. Trump after he said he would stay in his job despite efforts by a former U.S. attorney general, William P. Barr, to remove him.)
But it is far less common for federal judges to identify a candidate on their own, even though it is authorized by a federal statute, according to Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
Ms. Habba had met with the judges who held the power to extend her term to try to persuade them of her competence. But her efforts had largely fallen flat, according to several prominent lawyers in the state with knowledge of the discussions.
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