Federal Judge Threatens to Throw Out Alina Habba’s Successors Too

A federal judge has rejected President Trump’s new appointees to the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office, ruling that the president is illegally trying to get around Senate confirmation.

Chief U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann ruled Monday that the three-prosecutor team running the office is leading “unlawfully,” as the Trump administration tries to cite “enormous grants of executive power hidden in the vagaries and silences of the code.”

“Why does the fate of thousands of criminal prosecutions in this district potentially rest on the legitimacy of an unprecedented and byzantine leadership structure?” Brann wrote in his ruling. “The government tells us: The president doesn’t like that he cannot simply appoint whomever he wants.”

Several criminal cases in the district could be thrown out, with “scores of dangerous criminals” possibly able to escape punishment, Brann wrote, because the Trump administration doesn’t want to appoint U.S. attorneys legally—not just in New Jersey, but all around the country.

“The Office of the United States Attorney for at least five other Districts is currently vacant and in each case it appears that the Government is running the office through a delegation of authority to an individual of the Attorney General and President’s unilateral choice,” Brann wrote, noting that in two cases, judges used their legal power to appoint an attorney to fill the vacancy, and Trump fired their picks too.

“In both cases the President fired their selection within hours and [Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche] made combative (and legally incomplete) posts clearly indicating that the Department of Justice would not permit anyone to hold any United States Attorney’s office if that person was not handpicked by the President,” Brann continued.

The whole reason that the New Jersey office was being run by three attorneys was because Trump’s appointment of his personal lawyer, Alina Habba, as U.S. attorney was found to be illegal. Habba, who was set to lose her nomination vote in the Senate, unlawfully stayed past her interim term. She now works for the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., and called Monday’s ruling “ridiculous” on X.

“Judges may continue to try and stop President Trump from carrying out what the American people voted for, but we will not be deterred,” Habba wrote. “The unconstitutionality of this complete overreach into the Executive Branch, time and time again, will not succeed. They would rather have no U.S. Attorney than safety for the people of NJ.”

Ridiculous or not, absent the Senate, Trump’s handpicked prosecutors are going to keep getting rejected by federal judges. Unless the president starts appointing them legally, every federal prosecution is going to be in jeopardy.