PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Alina Habba, who his administration maneuvered to keep as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, is disqualified from that role, an appeals court said Monday.
A panel of judges from the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Philadelphia, joined a lower court judge’s ruling after hearing oral arguments at which Habba was present on October 20.
“It is clear that the current administration has been frustrated by some of the legal and political barriers to installing its appointees. Its efforts to elevate its preferred candidate for U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, to the role of Acting U.S. Attorney demonstrate the difficulties it has faced — yet the citizens of New Jersey and the loyal employees of the U.S. court deserve clarity,” wrote a U.S. stability court. 32 page opinion.
He concluded: “We will confirm the disqualification order of the District Court.”
The ruling comes amid efforts by the Republican Trump administration to retain Habba as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, a powerful post tasked with enforcing federal criminal and civil law. It also comes after judges questioned the government’s moves to keep Habba in place after her interim appointment expired and without her getting Senate confirmation.
Habba said after that hearing in a statement posted to X that she was fighting on behalf of other candidates to be federal prosecutors who were denied a chance at a Senate hearing.
Messages were left Monday seeking comment from the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office, Habba’s personal staff and the Justice Department.
Habba is not the only Trump administration prosecutor whose appointment has been challenged by defense attorneys.
Last week, a federal judge dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after concluding that the hastily installed prosecutor who brought the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Justice Department said it plans to appeal the rulings.
Judges on the panel included two Republican President George W. Bush appointees, D. Brooks Smith and D. Michael Fisher, and one Democratic President Barack Obama appointee, Luis Felipe Restrepo.
A lower court judge, Matthew Brann, said in August that Habba’s appointment was made through a “new series of legal and personnel moves” and that she was acting illegally as the US attorney for New Jersey.
That order said Habba’s actions in July could be invalidated, but the judge stayed the order pending appeal.
The government argued that Habba is validly serving in that role under a federal statute that allows for the first assistant district attorney, the position to which she was appointed by the Trump administration.
A similar dynamic is playing out in Nevada, where a federal judge has disqualified the Trump administration’s pick to be U.S. attorney there.
Habba’s case comes after several people accused of federal crimes in New Jersey challenged the legality of her warrant. They tried to block the charges, arguing that she did not have the authority to prosecute their cases after her 120-day term as acting U.S. attorney expired.
Habba was Trump’s criminal and civil lawyer before he was elected to a second term. She served as a White House counsel briefly before Trump appointed her as a federal prosecutor in March.
Shortly after the appointment, she said in an interview that she hoped to help “turn New Jersey red,” a rare political expression from a prosecutor.
She then brought a trespassing charge, which was eventually dropped, against the Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ras Baraka, over his visit to a federal immigration detention center.
Habba later charged Democratic U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver with assault over the same incident, a rare federal criminal case against a sitting member of Congress other than for corruption. McIver has denied the charges and pleaded not guilty. The case is pending.
Questions about whether Habba would continue in the job arose in July, when her temporary appointment was ending and it became clear that New Jersey’s two Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, would not support her appointment.
Earlier this year, as Habba’s appointment was expiring, federal judges in New Jersey exercised their power under the law to replace her with a career prosecutor who served as her second-in-command.
Attorney General Pam Bondi then fired the judge-appointed prosecutor and reappointed Habba as acting U.S. attorney. The Justice Department said the judges acted prematurely and said Trump has the authority to appoint his preferred candidate to enforce federal laws in the state.
Brann’s ruling said the president’s appointments are still subject to time limits and separation-of-powers rules set out in federal law.