Attorney General Pam Bondi violated federal law when she replaced Alina Habba, the former interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, with a “triumvirate” of attorneys, a federal judge ruled Monday.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said the triad currently leading the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey was another illegal attempt by President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to get around the U.S. attorney appointment process as laid out by the Constitution and federal law.
“The Government is warned that any further attempts to unlawfully fill the office will result in dismissals of pending cases,” Brann, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, wrote.
The ruling marks the latest blow to Trump’s shambolic effort to circumvent the Senate confirmation process and federal vacancy law to install loyalists at the helm of top U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country.
Brann is the same federal judge who ruled that Habba, a former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, had been illegally serving as the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey for months. Though Brann disqualified her in August, Habba didn’t formally resign until early December when the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his original order.
Bondi quickly replaced Habba by claiming that three separate officials — Jordan Fox, Philip Lamparello and Ari Fontecchio — were now running the office’s criminal, civil and administrative divisions. At the time, Fox had only been with the DOJ for less than a year.
In doing so, Bondi unilaterally fractured the power of a U.S. attorney, who is normally appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate for a four-year term, between three officials of her choosing.
In addition to finding that Bondi exceeded her statutory authority with the appointment scheme, Brann denounced the DOJ’s defense of the maneuver as an unprecedented assertion of executive power.
“On the Government’s reading, the Attorney General can appoint anyone to any subordinate position in the Department of Justice and delegate them the authority to act in any other subordinate role, no matter how significant,” Brann wrote. “That argument amounts to an enormous assertion of Presidential power.”
“One year into this administration, it is plain that President Trump and his top aides have chafed at the limits on their power set forth by law and the Constitution,” he added. “To avoid these roadblocks, this administration frequently purports to have discovered enormous grants of executive power hidden in the vagaries and silences of the code.”
The judge disqualified the triumvirate atop the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office from partaking in prosecutions against criminal defendants who challenged their appointments.
In a social media post Monday, Habba, who now serves as an advisor to the attorney general for U.S. attorneys, claimed Brann’s ruling was “ridiculous.”
“Judges may continue to try and stop President Trump from carrying out what the American people voted for, but we will not be deterred,” Habba said. “The unconstitutionality of this complete overreach into the Executive Branch, time and time again, will not succeed.”
Trump and his political appointees in the DOJ have used temporary positions to place and keep loyalists at the helm of key U.S. attorney offices across the country. The appointments are part of Trump’s wider effort to turn the DOJ into his personal law firm and use it to prosecute his enemies.
As acting U.S. attorney, Habba opened investigations into former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and state Attorney General Matt Platkin and brought charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. LaMonica McIver (N.J.) — all Democrats who have opposed Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
With the triumvirate disqualified, judges in the District of New Jersey now have the opportunity under federal law to appoint a temporary U.S. attorney.
However, a key part of Trump’s crusade to fully politicize the DOJ has been dismissing any prosecutor chosen by district judges and replacing them with his preferred — often inexperienced — allies.