President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Alina Habba said Monday she will no longer serve as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey in the wake of an appeals court ruling that found her appointment was unlawful.
In a statement on X, Habba wrote that “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.”
She said people should “not mistake compliance for surrender.”
In a separate statement on X, Attorney General Pam Bondi said she was "saddened to accept Alina's resignation."
Bondi said that the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling had made it "untenable for her to effectively run her office" and that she was naming Habba as a "senior advisor to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys."
She said the Justice Department is appealing the ruling that disqualified Habba from her post and that "we are confident it will be reversed."
"Alina intends to return to lead the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey if this occurs," Bondi wrote.
The Justice Department announced in a news release that three people would divvy up the work of running the office.
A federal judge ruled in August that Habba’s appointment was unlawful and that she was appointed to the job "through a novel series of legal and personnel moves.”
Trump initially named her as interim U.S. attorney on March 24, replacing another person who had been named interim U.S. attorney three weeks earlier.
Habba was sworn in on March 28, but interim appointments are capped at 120 days. Trump nominated her to be the permanent U.S. attorney on June 30, but the “Senate did not act” on her nomination, U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann noted.
On July 22, judges of the U.S. District Court of New Jersey invoked their statutory power to appoint a new U.S. attorney — Habba’s deputy.
The Justice Department then “conceived a multi-step maneuver” to keep Habba on the job, Brann said, with Bondi firing Habba’s successor and appointing Habba as “Special Attorney to the Attorney General” and then to the opened deputy spot — which allowed her to become acting U.S. attorney.
Brann found that the machinations were not legal, that they were a way to sidestep the Senate confirmation process and that Habba "must be disqualified from participating in any ongoing cases.”
A panel of 3rd Circuit judges agreed in a ruling last week that Habba should be disqualified and that if her appointment were allowed to stand, the way she was appointed would allow the Justice Department to fill such posts "indefinitely."
"This should raise a red flag,” the ruling said.
In her statement Monday, Habba said judges have become "weapons of the politicized left."
Habba's appointment had been challenged by some criminal defendants who argued she did not have the authority to oversee their cases. While Brann paused his ruling from taking effect until Habba's appeal was decided, the dispute caused headaches throughout the federal courts in the state, with some judges delaying trials for fear Habba's involvement could lead to cases being overturned.
Habba is not the only U.S. attorney whose appointment has been challenged.
A federal judge last month dismissed indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after having found that Lindsey Halligan, another former Trump lawyer who was prosecuting the cases, had been unlawfully appointed as acting U.S. attorney for Eastern District of Virginia.
Halligan presented those cases to a grand jury on her own, and the judge found that since her appointment was not proper, she “had no lawful authority to present the indictment.”
The administration has said it will appeal that ruling.
Even without Halligan’s involvement, the Justice Department failed to secure an indictment against James last week, with a federal grand jury taking the extremely rare step of rejecting the charges and finding prosecutors had failed to meet the low threshold of probable cause.
In remarks at the White House, Trump blamed Habba's resignation on the Senate blue slip tradition, which allows senators to block certain nominees in their home state. Habba has complained that the state's Democratic senators would not meet with her.
“It makes it impossible to appoint a judge or U.S. attorney, and it’s a shame, and the Republicans should be ashamed of themselves that they allow this to go on. Because I can’t appoint a U.S. attorney that’s not a Democrat, because they put a block on it,” Trump said.
“And this is a gentleman’s agreement that’s lasted for too long,” he said, urging Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to end the practice.
“We have about seven U.S. attorneys who are not going to be able to keep their jobs much longer because of the blue slip,” Trump said.
Grassley defended the tradition this year, saying that nominees without blue slips would not get confirmed and that he wants to Trump’s nominees to have “success, not failure.”
