A federal judge threw a top prosecutor from the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office out of his courtroom during a sentencing hearing this week and demanded that the office’s leadership testify about who had authority over their actions, according to court documents.
The rapid sequence of events on Monday in the courtroom of Judge Zahid N. Quraishi was the latest indication of growing tensions between the Justice Department and the federal judiciary in New Jersey. It came during the scheduled sentencing of a man who last year agreed to plead guilty to possession of child pornography.
The hearing did not go as prosecutors had planned. Judge Quraishi grew frustrated with the office’s head of appeals, Mark Coyne, who had not formally disclosed that he would appear, and fiercely interrogated a more junior prosecutor about whether the former interim U.S. attorney, Alina Habba, still had some role in operating the office.
Judge Quraishi eventually threw Mr. Coyne out.
The judge then ordered the three leaders of the New Jersey office, who last week were found to be occupying their positions unlawfully, to appear next month to testify about their office’s leadership structure. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed the unconventional three-person leadership team in December after Ms. Habba was disqualified. The leaders are Philip Lamparello, Jordan Fox and Ari Fontecchio.
Ms. Habba is now a senior adviser to the attorney general and supervises U.S. attorneys around the United States. She has been in the New Jersey office in recent weeks. It is unclear why. Her presence alone would not be inappropriate or out of the ordinary given her position. It is unclear what motivated Judge Quraishi’s questions.
Asked for comment, Ms. Habba said she had absolutely no role in operating the office. “I’m not the U.S. attorney anymore,” she said. “I left my post.”
She defended Mr. Coyne as “an incredibly talented attorney, prosecutor and appeals chief” and said that he “should only be treated with the utmost respect.”
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey did not respond to calls or emails. Mr. Coyne did not respond to an email or a call. And the Justice Department had no immediate comment.
The clash in Judge Quraishi’s courtroom comes at the height of a remarkable extended confrontation between the Trump administration and federal judges in New Jersey, who have accused the Justice Department of prioritizing its own personnel choices over public safety. Judges have warned that if the department continues to insist on installing the office’s leadership illegally, the integrity of criminal cases will be threatened.
Last week, the judge who disqualified Ms. Habba, Matthew W. Brann, found that the office’s three-person leadership team was unlawful. He wrote that President Trump’s reliance on illegal maneuvers to appoint New Jersey’s top prosecutors might mean that “scores of dangerous criminals” could have cases dismissed or convictions reversed, because the law would be in their favor.
Judge Brann paused any effect of his own decision to give the government time to appeal, but it has yet to do so.
The day after Judge Brann’s order, Judge Quraishi asked the U.S. attorney’s office if it wanted to delay the sentencing of the defendant who had planned to plead guilty to the child pornography charges, Francisco Villafane.
Judge Quraishi said that if the government were not requesting a delay, the line prosecutor on the case, Daniel Rosenblum, would have to be prepared to answer questions about his office’s leadership structure, sometimes referred to as the “triumvirate.”
Mr. Coyne, a veteran of the office, accompanied Mr. Rosenblum, a relative newcomer, to the Monday hearing. But Judge Quraishi, upon determining that Mr. Coyne had no formal right to appear in the case, told him that he could pass Mr. Rosenblum notes but could not address the court.
“I’m not going to hear from you, Mr. Coyne,” he said. “If you want to sit there for moral support or hand Mr. Rosenblum Post-its or whisper in his ear, I’ll let you do that as supervisor.”
The judge then proceeded to ask Mr. Rosenblum questions, first about the details of Mr. Villafane’s plea agreement, saying that the prosecutor had operated without having all the evidence in hand and was preparing to agree to allow the defendant to serve significantly less time than guidelines suggested.
“How did the screw-up happen?” Judge Quraishi asked. “Was it your office, the U.S. attorney’s office, the F.B.I. or both? How did you execute a plea agreement without knowing all the evidence?”
Then Judge Quraishi asked Mr. Rosenblum a series of questions about who was running the office, including whether Ms. Habba retained some leadership role.
“None that I’m aware of,” Mr. Rosenblum said.
“So she could be operating the office,” the judge said.
Mr. Coyne interjected. “She is not,” he said.
Judge Quraishi told Mr. Coyne to sit down. “You don’t get to blindside the court and do whatever it is you guys want to do,” he warned. “So if you continue to speak, you can leave.”
Mr. Coyne continued to speak and the judge directed the court security officers to remove him. Before they could act, he asked Mr. Coyne to leave once more. Mr. Coyne did so.
The judge then resumed questioning Mr. Rosenblum, asking whether he knew personally whether Ms. Habba was still “influencing the operations of your office.”
When Mr. Rosenblum said he did not have personal knowledge, Judge Quraishi said that he would call the trio of leaders to testify under oath. He said that he would “figure out who is currently operating this office before I proceed with today’s sentencing hearing.”
Judge Quraishi, who in 2021 became the first Muslim federal district judge when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. appointed him, was previously a prosecutor in the New Jersey office and an assistant chief counsel at the Department of Homeland Security. He has had harsh dealings with the U.S. attorney’s office in recent weeks. In February, he said that the office had lost its credibility and was intentionally violating immigration-related orders.
In response, a right-wing media personality, Eric Daugherty, posted on social media calling the judge’s immigration ruling “evil and depraved” and writing “strike him down and remove him.” The post was shared by Ms. Habba. But she soon took her post down.
Toward the end of Monday’s hearing, Judge Quraishi told Mr. Rosenblum to alert his colleagues, some of whom had hearings scheduled in his courtroom “in the next week.” “They’re not going to be able to just walk into this courtroom and say, ‘We just want to proceed,’” he said.
“You have lost the confidence and the trust of this court. You have lost the confidence and the trust of the New Jersey legal community, and you are losing the trust and confidence of the public.”
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in the New York region for The Times. He is focused on political influence and its effect on the rule of law in the area’s federal and state courts.
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