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 U.S. 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 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.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/new-jersey/alina-habba-disqualified-trump-prosecutor/6424490/
Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan have both been found to be unlawfully appointed by a federal judge. Habba had represented Trump in cases prior to his 2024 presidential campaign before being named by Trump in March 2025 to a 120-day interim term as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey. Despite resistance from State legislators, Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi orquestrated “a shell game to keep her in power,” according to lawyers Abbe D. Lowell and Gerald Krovatinin court papers