Appeals court disqualifies former Trump lawyer Alina Habba from serving as interim US Attorney for New Jersey
PHILADELPHIA — The Trump administration’s maneuvers to keep the president’s former lawyer Alina Habba in place as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor were illegal and she is disqualified, a federal appeals court said Monday.A panel of judges from the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in Philadelphia sided with a lower court judge’s ruling after hearing oral arguments at which Habba herself was present on Oct.20.The ruling comes amid the push by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration to keep Habba as the acting US 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.Messages were left Monday seeking comment from the US attorney’s office in New Jersey, Habba’s personal staffer and the Justice Department.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 US 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 Demcoratic President Barack Obama: Luis Felipe Restrepo.A lower court judge said in August Habba’s appointment was done with a “novel series of legal and personnel moves” and that she w...