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.
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.
