The Trump Administration officially nominated interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba for a full four-year term, the White House announced Tuesday afternoon.
The firebrand attorney, who rose to national prominence in 2021 while defending then-former President Donald Trump in his various legal cases, has shaken the state since the president appointed her to the role in March. In just a few months as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, her office has charged Newark Mayor Ras Baraka with trespassing at a migrant detention center (those charges were dismissed in “embarrassing” fashion), charged Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) with assaulting federal officers, and claimed to have launched an investigation into Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matt Platkin.
Democrats have lambasted Habba throughout her term, saying the aforementioned prosecutions and investigations are politically motivated. Habba herself has said she hopes her work will help “turn New Jersey red.”
Interim U.S. attorneys can only serve for 120 days, and there has been much speculation over what’s next for Habba, who is less than a month away from reaching that deadline. (Depending on certain interpretations of how federal law addresses interim U.S. attorneys, Habba’s term technically may have ended today.)
The Senate typically defers to home-state senators on U.S. attorney nominations, and she likely faces an uphill climb: Senator Andy Kim, for example, called Habba an “unacceptable partisan choice” in March. Senator Cory Booker hasn’t said much about Habba — in March, the Democrat said he was focused on working with the White House to find a suitable permanent replacement. In May, he said the Trump administration signaled it would not appoint Habba to a full term, a report the White House publicly refuted.
Habba has been the center of controversy since her appointment in March. She is currently a defendant in a lawsuit by Baraka, who alleges she and a federal agent illegally arrested and defamed him after a scuffle outside a migrant detention center in Newark. McIver last week pleaded not guilty to charges that she assaulted federal officers during that same scuffle; the congresswoman has said she was the victim of assault, not the other way around. Habba has also launched an “Election Integrity Task Force,” a team of federal officials working to enforce the president’s election-related executive orders; the ACLU-NJ has called the task force “a threat to our democracy.”
Trump’s original pick for the U.S. Attorney job was State Sen. Doug Steinhardt (R-Lopatcong), a former state party chairman who ran briefly for governor in 2021 as a Trump loyalist. Steinhardt withdrew his name from consideration before he was officially nominated, however, forcing Trump’s team to find a backup option. Trump then tapped John Giordano, a Philadelphia lawyer and Burlington County native who had served on Trump’s transition team, for three weeks before settling on Habba.
