Habba named acting U.S. Attorney, likely extending her tenure

Alina Habba, whose term as interim U.S. Attorney was set to expire tomorrow night, has been named as acting U.S. Attorney instead, likely allowing her to extend her term in office by 210 days.

The decision, which Habba announced on the social media platform X, is part of a growing battle between President Donald Trump’s administration and the federal judiciary in New Jersey, which had voted earlier this week to place a different prosecutor, Desiree Grace, in the U.S. Attorney’s office.

In order to be named acting U.S. Attorney, Habba seemingly resigned as interim U.S. Attorney and was instead appointed as First Assistant U.S. Attorney, the #2 job that Grace previously held. In the event of a vacancy, the First Assistant becomes the acting U.S. Attorney with a time limit of 210 days, potentially keeping Habba in office through next March.

“Donald J. Trump is the 47th President. Pam Bondi is the Attorney General. And I am now the Acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey,” Habba wrote on X in a post that was re-posted by Bondi herself. “I don’t cower to pressure. I don’t answer to politics. This is a fight for justice. And I’m all in.”

When Habba, Trump’s personal lawyer and a conservative firebrand, was named to the U.S. Attorney’s office in March, her time in office was theoretically capped at 120 days under federal law. The two ways her tenure could have been extended would have been through Senate confirmation or through a vote of the state’s federal District Court judges.

Trump submitted Habba’s nomination to the Senate earlier this month, but facing opposition from Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim, she failed to quickly move forward. And when the state’s District Court judges met earlier this week, they chose not to retain Habba and instead voted to put Grace, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney and Habba’s own deputy, in her place.

The Trump administration, however, quickly reacted by firing Grace from the Justice Department entirely; Grace later said that she still intends on taking office as U.S. Attorney on Saturday.

In the lead-up to today’s Justice Department maneuver, Habba also had her name withdrawn from Senate consideration, as active nominees cannot be made acting U.S. Attorney. It’s possible that a legal challenge could arise over Habba’s appointment.

In a joint statement, Booker and Kim said they stand in support of Grace and the federal judges who appointed her, and lambasted the Trump administration for “bypass[ing] the court’s lawful authority and ignoring the required advice and consent of Congress.”

“The Trump Administration’s relentless attacks on the court are not only disgraceful, they’re knowingly hypocritical,” they said. “This very court exercised the same authority to appoint a U.S. Attorney during Trump’s first term, and just days ago, the Deputy Attorney General was publicly urging the court to use that same law to install Alina Habba. They don’t object to the process, they just don’t like the outcome. So instead, they continue undermine the legitimacy of the judiciary, jeopardizing New Jerseyans’ safety, and destabilizing the integrity of our legal system.”

This story was updated at 10:13 p.m. with comment from Booker and Kim.