Former Trump lawyer Alina Habba is disqualified as top New Jersey
prosecutor, US appeals court rules
[December 02, 2025]
By MIKE CATALINI
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer
Alina Habba is disqualified from serving as New Jersey’s top federal
prosecutor despite his administration’s maneuvers to keep her in the
role, an appeals court said Monday.
A panel of judges from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in
Philadelphia sided with a lower-court judge's ruling after hearing oral
arguments at which Habba was present on Oct. 20.
“It is apparent that the current administration has been frustrated by
some of the legal and political barriers to getting its appointees in
place. 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 in the U.S. Attorney’s Office deserve
some clarity and stability,” the court wrote in a 32-page opinion.
It concluded: “We will affirm the District Court’s disqualification
order.”
The ruling comes amid the push by Trump's Republican administration to
keep Habba as the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, a powerful post
charged with enforcing federal criminal and civil law. It also comes
after the 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
have been denied a chance for a Senate hearing.
The White House had no immediate comment on Habba and referred questions
to the Justice Department. Messages were left Monday seeking comment
from the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey, Habba’s personal staffer
and the Justice Department.
The decision affirmed Habba is serving unlawfully, attorneys for the
appellees said in an emailed statement.
"We will continue to challenge President Trump’s unlawful appointments
of purported U.S. Attorneys wherever appropriate,” said attorneys Abbe
Lowell, Gerry Krovatin and Norm Eisen in the statement.
Other appointments have been challenged, too
Habba is hardly the only Trump administration prosecutor whose
appointment has been challenged by defense lawyers.
Last week, a federal judge dismissed criminal cases against former FBI
Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after
concluding that the hastily installed prosecutor who filed the charges,
Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed to the position of interim
U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Justice
Department has said it intends to appeal the rulings.
The judges on the panel were two appointed by Republican President
George W. Bush, D. Brooks Smith and D. Michael Fisher, as well as one
named by Democratic President Barack Obama, Luis Felipe Restrepo.
It wasn't immediately clear how the ruling would affect prosecutions.
Jacob Elberg, a Seton Hall Law School professor, said the decision would
have “real implications."
“This is an office that has a lot of responsibility for protecting
citizens from all types of criminal conduct as well as issues that are
civil in nature, but real significant consequences,” he said. “And this
is a real challenge to that office’s ability to do its work.”
[to top of second column]
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President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in for Alina Habba
as interim US Attorney General for New Jersey, in the Oval Office of
the White House in Washington, March 28, 2025. (Pool via AP, file)
The judge said Habba was unlawfully serving
A lower-court judge, Matthew Brann, said in August that Habba's
appointment was done with a “novel series of legal and personnel
moves” and that she was unlawfully serving as U.S attorney for New
Jersey.
That order said Habba's actions since July could be invalidated, but
the judge stayed the order pending appeal.
The government argued Habba is validly serving in the role under a
federal statute allowing the first assistant attorney, a post she
was appointed to by the Trump administration.
A similar dynamic is playing out in Nevada, where a federal judge
disqualified the Trump administration’s pick to be U.S. attorney
there.
Who challenged Habba's tenure?
The Habba case comes after several people charged with federal
crimes in New Jersey challenged the legality of her tenure. They
sought to block the charges, arguing she didn’t have the authority
to prosecute their cases after her 120-day term as interim U.S.
attorney expired.
Habba was Trump’s attorney in criminal and civil proceedings before
he was elected to a second term. She served as a White House adviser
briefly before Trump named her as a federal prosecutor in March.
Shortly after her appointment, she said in an interview that she
hoped to help “turn New Jersey red,” a rare overt political
expression from a prosecutor.
She then brought a trespassing charge, eventually dropped, against
Democratic Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka stemming from his
visit to a federal immigration detention center.
Habba later charged Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver with
assault stemming from the same incident, a rare federal criminal
case against a sitting member of Congress other than for corruption.
McIver 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
New Jersey’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim,
would not back 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 had served as her
second-in-command.
Attorney General Pam Bondi then fired the prosecutor installed by
the judges and renamed Habba as acting U.S. attorney. The Justice
Department said the judges acted prematurely and said Trump had 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 the time limits and power-sharing rules laid out in federal law.
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