Alina Habba complained that federal judges aren’t ”respecting the president” after U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann found that she was working unlawfully as acting U.S. attorney.
President Donald Trump’s administration had gone to great lengths to keep his former personal lawyer in the job before her interim appointment expired, but Brann found that her actions since July 1 could be declared void.
The judge’s decision threw open the door to a wider review of the administration’s method for appointing prosecutors.
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“Faced with the question of whether Ms. Habba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not,” Brann wrote.
The judge also found that Habba, 41, should be disqualified from participating in any ongoing cases.
Speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday, Habba decried New Jersey’s 15 “Obama and Biden-appointed” judges, including Brann, who have “tried to use their seat for political motivation.”
”I am the pick of the president, I am the pick of Pam Bondi our attorney general, and I will serve this country like I have for the last several years in any capacity,” she said.
”We will not fall to rogue judges, we will not fall to people trying to be political when they should just be doing their job: respecting the president.”
In July, a panel of federal judges declined to extend Habba’s 120-day interim appointment, instead appointing her chief deputy, Desiree Leigh Grace, to the role.
Attorney General Pam Bondi then intervened to try to move Habba into position by firing Grace, withdrawing Habba’s Senate nomination, and naming her as interim, and hoping that was enough to get around the usual rules on appointing U.S. attorneys.
Habba also called out by name New Jersey Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim for blocking her confirmation, along with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.
”[They] have truly done us a disservice by... not allowing a lot of the president’s picks to go through and be voted on by [the] Senate,” she told Hannity.
Without the support of Booker and Kim, New Jersey’s senators, Habba’s chances of being confirmed by the Senate were slim. Booker described Habba as a “partisan warrior” and both Booker and Kim said that she did ”not meet the standard” to serve as U.S. attorney.
Grassley has previously declined to end the practice of honoring blue slips, which allow senators from the minority party to essentially veto nominees for U.S. attorney and district court judges from their home state, despite urgings from Trump.
”Chuck Grassley, who I got re-elected to the U.S. Senate when he was down, by a lot, in the Great State of Iowa, could solve the ‘Blue Slip’ problem we are having with respect to the appointment of Highly Qualified Judges and U.S. Attorneys, with a mere flick of the pen,” the president wrote on Truth Social last month.
”Senator Grassley must step up... Chuck, I know you have the Courage to do this, DO IT!”
