A federal judge on Thursday ruled that Alina Habba, the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, had been acting without legal authority for more than a month, thrusting the state’s already paralyzed federal court system further into disarray and raising questions about the president’s power to choose his own top federal prosecutors.
“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,” the judge, Matthew W. Brann of the Middle District of Pennsylvania, wrote.
“Because she is not currently qualified to exercise the functions and duties of the office in an acting capacity,” he added, “she must be disqualified from participating in any ongoing cases.”
He paused any outcome of his own decision, which will allow the United States to fight for Ms. Habba in a federal appeals court. Still, the ruling was a remarkable rebuke to a Justice Department that has undertaken extraordinary measures to keep its preferred U.S. attorneys in their jobs.
For weeks, questions over whether Ms. Habba was legally authorized to be New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor have left the state’s district court system at a standstill, delaying hearings, plea agreements, grand jury proceedings and at least one trial.
Judge Brann noted last week during a hearing on the matter that any decision he made could be expected to be re-evaluated by the Court of Appeals, underscoring the gravity of the legal questions posed. But he also indicated that swift action was urgently needed in order to return the state’s federal court system to “at least some level of normality.”
Ms. Habba, 41, represented President Trump in several civil cases and served as his campaign spokeswoman. But she had no experience in criminal law before the president said on social media in late March that he had appointed her as New Jersey’s interim U.S. attorney “effective immediately.”
Days later, she told a podcaster that she hoped to use her job in the traditionally nonpartisan office to help Republicans “turn New Jersey red.” Within months, her office brought charges against two prominent New Jersey Democrats, Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark and Representative LaMonica McIver of the 10th Congressional District.
She quickly dropped the charges against Mr. Baraka, eliciting a harsh rebuke from a judge for what he called a “hasty arrest.” (Mr. Baraka is now suing Ms. Habba for malicious prosecution.) Ms. McIver’s lawyers have said that the government engaged in “vindictive prosecution” that smacks of disparate treatment, particularly in light of the president’s leniency toward the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters.
Last month, a panel of federal judges declined to extend Ms. Habba’s tenure and instead tapped a veteran prosecutor, Desiree L. Grace, to lead the office. That led Attorney General Pam Bondi to publicly disparage the judges, fire Ms. Grace and, in a complicated series of Justice Department maneuvers, elevate Ms. Habba to the role of acting U.S. attorney.
Two separate legal motions were quickly filed challenging the legality of Ms. Habba’s appointment.
Confusion has since gripped much of the state’s federal court system, and morale within the historically prestigious U.S. attorney’s office has plummeted.
When pressed by Judge Brann about “what else is going on in terms of federal prosecutions” in New Jersey, Mark E. Coyne, a lawyer from Ms. Habba’s office, acknowledged that few proceedings, other than preliminary actions by magistrate judges, were being held. Certain upcoming trials, he said, “likely will be adjourned.”
During court appearances that have taken place, prosecutors have begun to say that they are appearing for the United States on behalf of the deputy attorney general as well as on behalf of Ms. Habba, making plain the uncertainty of her authority.
The government has so far refused the judge’s suggestion that Ms. Habba recuse herself to eliminate confusion and to ensure that the courts function efficiently while the legality of the appointment is debated. “There’s sort of a dignity component to this, as well,” Mr. Coyne said. “And by that I mean that the executive branch has made very clear whom they wish to be in charge of my office.”
During the hourslong hearing on the matter in Williamsport, Pa., lawyers for the Justice Department and for defendants in two pending criminal cases debated the meaning of two federal statutes that govern temporary appointments to certain federal jobs. They also laid out differing views about when the clock started ticking on Ms. Habba’s term as interim U.S. attorney — a post that by law expires after 120 days — and whether the attorney general could make successive interim appointments.
Henry C. Whitaker, a lawyer representing the Justice Department, said federal law should be interpreted to give the executive branch — and, in particular, the attorney general — “substantial authority to decide who is executing the criminal laws of the United States.”
The Supreme Court, he argued, has made clear that that was “at the core of the executive power.”
“To me, that is a feature of the statute, not a bug — that the executive branch has substantial authority over these officials who are exercising that core executive power,” Mr. Whitaker said, according to a transcript of the hearing.
Defense lawyers have argued that Ms. Habba is barred from serving because the president had submitted her name for confirmation by the Senate, where it stalled without support from either of New Jersey’s senators. Though Mr. Trump withdrew her nomination, lawyers have argued that the wording of the statute blocks a presidential administration from sidestepping the Senate’s “advice and consent” role by installing a doomed candidate in an acting capacity.
“Congress did not want a situation where someone who had been nominated and then, for whatever reason, failed to pass the confirmation process of the Senate was then catapulted by the president into the acting position,” one defense lawyer, Gerald Krovatin, told the judge.
Another defense lawyer, Thomas Mirigliano, called Ms. Habba’s ascendancy “circular.” She was serving as interim U.S. attorney until her 120-day term ended. Then, after Ms. Grace was fired as the first deputy in the office, Ms. Habba took that job. With no U.S. attorney in place, Ms. Habba, as the office’s highest-ranking official, automatically took over as top prosecutor.
“She resigned, created the vacancy to fill it herself,” Mr. Mirigliano said.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he added. “And it goes completely against what the statute is meant to protect.”
Judge Brann was a member of the conservative Federalist Society and active in Republican Party politics before joining the federal bench in 2013; he has been the district’s chief judge since 2021. In 2020, after Mr. Trump lost the presidential election, Judge Brann dismissed a lawsuit by the Trump campaign that had claimed there were widespread improprieties with mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
In a scathing decision, Judge Brann said the campaign’s argument had been “haphazardly stitched together,” likening it to Frankenstein’s monster.
Mr. Whitaker, in his final argument to the judge last week, acknowledged that the circumstances that led to Ms. Habba’s appointment were atypical. But he said it was New Jersey’s district court judges, who declined to extend Ms. Habba’s term as U.S. attorney, who were to blame for causing a “constitutional confrontation that did not need to happen.”
Mr. Krovatin objected strenuously to the notion that the judges had done anything other than exercise their “proper constitutional and statutory right.”
“This crisis,” he said, “was caused by appointing someone who has no business being the U.S. attorney in New Jersey — or anywhere else.”