 "Jolt to Trump: US judge declares Alina Habba’s appointment as NJ acting attorney unlawful")
A US federal judge has ruled that President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Alina Habba, has been illegally serving as the acting attorney of the district of New Jersey.
US District Judge Matthew Brann has said that Habba’s tenure as the interim US attorney expired in July and that the Trump administration’s attempts to extend her time in office through unconventional methods violate federal law.
Judge Brann, therefore, ordered Habba’s disqualification and directed her not to take up any more cases and noted that any action she undertook since July 1 will be “declared void”, according to Reuters.
Who is Alina Habba?
Habba represented Trump in criminal and civil proceedings before he was elected to a second term. She briefly served as a White House adviser before Trump appointed 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, and said she planned to investigate the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general.
She then brought a trespassing charge, which was eventually dropped, against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka stemming from his visit to a federal immigration detention center. Habba later charged Democratic US 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.
Justice Dept calls for an appeal
Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced that the US government will appeal against Judge Brann’s order, saying Habba was “doing incredible work in New Jersey, and we will protect her position from activist judicial attacks.”
If upheld, the ruling could lead to challenges against a handful of other US attorneys who have been similarly installed by the Trump administration without Senate approval after their temporary assignments have expired.
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