Alina Habba, Donald Trump’s defence lawyer during a defamation case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, has lost her bid to become New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, with the clock running out on her interim status on Tuesday.
According to an order from New Jersey’s district court, a panel of judges declined to permanently appoint Habba to be the state’s US attorney, signaling a rebuke against the Trump administration.
Habba inflamed Democratic hostilities when she brought charges, later dropped, against the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, and the state representative LaMonica McIver after they visited a privately operated immigration detention center in Newark.
The federal judges did not offer any explanation for their decision. But the order, signed by Renee Marie Bumb, the chief federal judge for the district of New Jersey, appointed Desiree Leigh Grace, a career prosecutor whom Habba had named as her first assistant US attorney, as her replacement.
The justice department accused the panel of judges of political motives for declining Habba’s nomination, and, hours later, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, said Grace also had been removed.
“This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges – especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers,” Bondi wrote in a post on X, referring to Trump’s authority under the US constitution.
Grace has been with the US attorney’s office since 2016 and most recently led its criminal division. The appointment was to take effect on Tuesday 22 July, or after the expiration of 120 days following Habba’s interim appointment in March.
Democrats condemned the removal of Grace. “The firing of a career public servant, lawfully appointed by the court, is another blatant attempt to intimidate anyone that doesn’t agree with them and undermine judicial independence,” Democratic US senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim from New Jersey said in a joint statement.
Habba, 41, had clashed with Booker and Kim. In a statement earlier this month, the senators said Habba had “degraded the office and pursued frivolous and politically-motivated prosecutions”.
The senators said Habba “does not meet the standard to serve the people of New Jersey”, and pointed to the arrest of Baraka and her creation of an “Election Integrity Task Force”, which civil rights groups have criticized as an effort to purge some state voter rolls.
Habba had been criticized for having no prior prosecutorial experience and politicizing the role. She told a rightwing talkshow host shortly after being named to the post: “We could turn New Jersey red. I think New Jersey is absolutely close to getting there, so hopefully while I’m there I can help that cause. And you know, I’m not a political person in that role, but I can tell you that the one thing I just want to do is make [New Jersey] safer.”
Habba’s dismissal comes as Democrats in the US Senate recently ended the “blue slip” tradition for circuit court nominees, but kept in place the practice for US attorneys and district court judges. The blue slip system gives a state’s two senators, in this case Booker and Kim, a measure of approval. Without it, a nominee faces confirmation hearings.
That has allowed Emil Bove to advance as Trump’s pick for the US court of appeals for the third circuit but allowed federal judges to knock Habba out of the running for New Jersey’s US attorney spot because she had not been confirmed by the Senate judiciary committee.
Reuters contributed reporting
