Court rules Alina Habba can’t cosplay as a U.S. attorney anymore

Image: Joe Tabacca / shutterstock.com

Turns out Donald Trump can’t just slap a badge on his favorite TV lawyer and call her a U.S. attorney. A federal appeals court has ruled that ethically challenged Alina Habba, best known for losing lawsuits on Trump’s behalf with unwavering confidence, was unlawfully installed as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, and the shell game the Trump Administration has played to install her, also illegal.

But on Monday, the three judges — L. Felipe Restrepo, D. Brooks Smith and D. Michael Fisher — said that each of those maneuvers had violated the complex set of laws that governs vacancies at the top of federal agencies.

When Ms. Grace was fired, the Trump administration designated Ms. Habba to fill her role as first assistant — the highest-ranking position in the office given that there was no U.S. attorney — and argued that doing so meant that Ms. Habba was effectively acting U.S. attorney.

For good measure, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, also appointed Ms. Habba a “special attorney” with jurisdiction over New Jersey.

But the judges wrote that the automatic elevation of the first assistant occurred only at the actual time of the vacancy, and that neither the president nor anyone else could jury-rig that process. As for the special attorney appointment, they said, it was “plainly prohibited” by law.

NYT

In what sounds less like constitutional governance and more like a game of Mad Libs, the Trump administration tried to keep Habba in power by inventing a rotating job title wheel: interim, acting, first assistant, special attorney, none of which made her legal. Judges weren’t buying it. They ruled the whole thing violated the actual laws that determine who gets to prosecute people, reminding the administration that “because I said so” is not, in fact, a legal doctrine.