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NEW JERSEY (CN) — New Jersey lawyer Alina Habba announced Monday that she is resigning from her appointment as the Garden State’s acting U.S. attorney, one week after a federal appeals court upheld her disqualification for circumventing congressional approval.
“While I was focused on delivering real results, judges in my state took advantage of a flawed blue slip tradition and became weapons for the politicized left,” Habba wrote in a statement announcing her resignation. “As a result of the Third Circuit’s ruling, and to protect the stability and integrity of the office which I love, I have decided to step down in my role as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.”
Habba, who emerged into the MAGA sphere by serving on President Donald Trump’s legal team for years in several high-profile cases — including his defamation trials against writer E. Jean Carroll and his civil fraud case in state court — indicated she will continue to work for Trump’s Justice Department, in a newly-created capacity as an advisor to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“My fight will now stretch across the country,” Habba wrote. “As we wait for further review of the court’s ruling. I will continue to service the Department of Justice as the Senior Advisor to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys.”
Bondi echoed Habba’s fervent disapproval of last week’s appeals ruling in a simultaneous statement Monday on Habbi’s resignation.
“Following the flawed Third Circuit decision disqualifying Alina Habba from performing her duties in the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of New Jersey, I am saddened to accept Alina’s resignation,” Bondi wrote on Monday morning. “The court’s ruling made it untenable for her to effectively run her office, with politicized judges pausing trials designed to bring violent criminals to justice. These judges should not be able to countermand the President’s choice of attorneys entrusted with carrying out the executive branch’s core responsibility of prosecuting crime.”
Two months into his second term as president, Trump announced in March 2025 that he would appoint his former personal attorney and staunch defender to the top Department of Justice post in her home state as an Interim U.S. Attorney.
Five months later, a Pennsylvania federal judge sitting by designation in New Jersey federal court concluded that Habba had been unlawfully serving as a U.S. Attorney.
In a 77-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann ruled Habba cannot participate in prosecutions because her appointment was invalid.
“Faced with the question of whether Ms. Habba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not,” Brann wrote.
Brann, a Barack Obama appointee in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, was designated to deliver the ruling after federal judges in New Jersey declined to extend Habba’s appointment as interim U.S. attorney the month prior.
Interim U.S. attorneys, appointed by the president, can only serve for 120 days unless they are confirmed by the Senate or extended by the judges in the district they serve.
Despite the judges voting Habba out, top Trump administration officials engaged in an unusual multistep maneuver to put her back in charge, circumventing the standard process.
Three months later, the panel of judges for the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit court of appeals again upheld Habba’s disqualification and blocked her from assuming the prosecutorial role.
“It is apparent that the current administration has been frustrated by some of the legal and political barriers to getting its appointees in place,” U.S. Circuit Judge D. Michael Fisher, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in the panel’s 32-page opinion. “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.”
Habba represented Trump at the second of two defamation trials brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, in which Trump was found liable for rape. Jurors awarded Carroll more than $80 million.
Habba also played a key role on Trump’s legal team for his civil fraud case in Manhattan, another case he lost. A judge ordered Trump to pay roughly half a billion dollars after finding that he falsely inflated the value of his assets to swindle banks into giving him favorable loans.
In that trial, Habba and Trump’s other attorneys drew gag orders for repeatedly attacking the judge’s law clerk in open court.
As New Jersey’s top prosecutor, Habba raised eyebrows with an effort to prosecute Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested in May on charges of trespassing at a federal immigration holding facility.
A magistrate judge chastised Habba for targeting the mayor and quickly dropped the charges against him. Baraka is suing for malicious prosecution.
The daughter of Iraqi immigrants, Habba entered the MAGA circle in 2019 after joining Trump’s Bedminster golf club, less than a 10-minute drive from her namesake law firm in New Jersey, where she eventually became friendly with Trump. She reportedly has been under an ethics investigation for more than a year on claims that she coerced an employee who tried to sue the club for sexual harassment by her manager into signing an illegal nondisclosure agreement.
Habba has been a fierce Trump ally both in and out of court. She joined Trump’s latest successful presidential campaign as a senior adviser and spoke at the final night of the 2024 Republican National Convention.
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