Alina Habba Steps Down As New Jersey’s Top Federal Prosecutor

Alina Habba, the Trump loyalist turned New Jersey U.S. attorney, said Monday that she will step down from her post after an appeals court ruling last week upheld her disqualification from the job.

Habba’s decision to vacate the position was an unexpected twist in the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to circumvent the Senate confirmation process to install U.S. attorneys of its choosing across the country. The administration could have kept her in the job while appealing last week’s ruling by a panel from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court.

In a social media post, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department “will seek further review of this decision,” adding that Habba “intends to return” to the post if the ruling is overturned.

For now, Habba’s resignation ends the administration’s long-running gambit to keep the president’s former personal lawyer atop the U.S. attorney’s office over the objection of the state’s two Democratic senators and after district judges refused to allow her to stay on the job.

Habba said in a statement that she would leave “to protect the stability and integrity of the office which I love.” She said she would continue to work in the Justice Department as senior adviser to the attorney general for U.S. attorneys, a job that appears to be a newly created position.

Habba in August became the first of the U.S. attorneys the Trump administration attempted to install without Senate confirmation to be disqualified by a federal judge. Judges have since disqualified Trump-installed U.S. attorneys in the Los Angeles area, Nevada and Virginia.

In Virginia, the disqualification of Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney resulted in a judge tossing the politically charged cases she brought against Trump’s political enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. Earlier Monday, Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche accused some judges in the Eastern District of Virginia of “engaging in an unconscionable campaign of bias and hostility” against Halligan and prosecutors in that office.

And in upstate New York, a judge is considering whether to disqualify the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York.

Habba’s departure follows a series of high-profile conflicts with Democratic elected officials in the Garden State, including assault charges she filed against Rep. LaMonica McIver following a chaotic scrum outside an immigration detention facility in May. McIver has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

McIver has said she is being targeted by Habba’s office for being a Democrat. A judge declined to dismiss the charges on those grounds, but McIver is expected to appeal.

Habba’s office filed another charge related to the same May incident against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka but later dropped it in what a magistrate judge called a worrisome and embarrassing misstep for prosecutors.

Months of questions about Habba’s legal authority have caused turmoil in New Jersey federal courts, stalling criminal proceedings and showing up in at least one civil case involving her office.