President Trump on Monday said that he was appointing a spokeswoman and former personal lawyer as New Jersey’s interim U.S. attorney, continuing a pattern of placing his former legal representatives in top law enforcement positions.
The appointee, Alina Habba, defended Mr. Trump in civil trials that stemmed from lawsuits brought against him by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and the writer E. Jean Carroll, before serving as a spokeswoman for him during the 2024 campaign. Both trials resulted in heavy financial penalties for the president, who has appealed the results.
Though Mr. Trump has named several of his other former lawyers to high-ranking positions in the Justice Department, Ms. Habba will be the first of the group to serve as an interim U.S. attorney. Her appointment is another example of Mr. Trump’s tight grip over the Justice Department in his second term.
“I am honored to serve my home state of New Jersey as interim U.S. attorney and I am grateful to President Trump for entrusting me with this tremendous responsibility,” Ms. Habba said in a statement. “Just like I did during my time as President Trump’s personal attorney, I will continue to fight for truth and justice.”
She added, “We will end the weaponization of justice, once and for all.”
Ms. Habba, who has no prosecutorial experience and previously ran a small firm specializing in civil litigation, will oversee the work of about 150 prosecutors in New Jersey.
It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will move to install her to permanently run the U.S. attorney’s office as he has with other interim prosecutors. Speaking outside the White House on Monday, Ms. Habba did not answer questions about how long her interim appointment was expected to last or whether she would seek the position permanently.
She will take over from John Giordano, who Mr. Trump said Monday would be nominated as the new ambassador to Namibia.
Ms. Habba was a little-known lawyer until 2021, when she began to work for Mr. Trump, whom she met through his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. That year, she filed a $100 million lawsuit against The New York Times and Mr. Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, accusing them of plotting to gain access to his tax records. A judge dismissed the lawsuit.
But Ms. Habba, who stood apart even from Mr. Trump’s other lawyers with her pugilistic, openly political style, continued to represent the former president. She helped lead his defense team in two civil trials stemming from the lawsuits by Ms. James and Ms. Carroll.
In the first case, Ms. James accused Mr. Trump of fraudulently inflating his net worth by billions of dollars. A judge found against Mr. Trump and fined him more than $450 million. The case is now with an appeals court.
Ms. Habba’s co-counsel in that case, Christopher M. Kise, applauded the choice of Ms. Habba as U.S. attorney, saying that she would be a “zealous and tireless advocate for justice in the District of New Jersey.”
In the second case, Ms. Carroll accused Mr. Trump of defaming her in response to her allegation that he had raped her decades earlier. A jury found in favor of Ms. Carroll, awarding her $83.3 million. That case is also on appeal.
During the 2024 campaign, Ms. Habba made frequent television appearances on Mr. Trump’s behalf, and addressed the audience during the last night of the Republican National Convention, calling herself a “feisty Jersey girl who is fed up with far-left corruption in Washington.”
“President Trump championed my journey, empowering me to be who I became today,” she said.
Though U.S. attorneys are traditionally nonpartisan, Ms. Habba on Monday did not appear inclined to pare back her attacks on Mr. Trump’s political enemies. Just minutes after she was named, in her remarks outside the White House, she criticized New Jersey’s Democratic leaders.
“There is corruption, there is injustice, and there is a heavy amount of crime right in Cory Booker’s backyard and right under Governor Murphy, and that will stop,” she said. Ms. Habba added, in an apparent reference to her former client, that she would be “going after the people that we should be going after, not the people that are falsely accused.”
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