A federal judge said former interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba’s accusations against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D-NJ) were “ultimately unfounded” and may have been made with “actual malice.”
U.S. District Judge Brian Martinotti made those comments in a 33-page opinion issued Friday that dismissed Baraka’s lawsuit against Habba and a senior Homeland Security official.
Baraka sued Habba and Ricky Patel, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Newark, over his May 2025 arrest outside an immigration detention.
“Habba’s comments—though ultimately unfounded, as evidenced by the United States of America’s proposed order for dismissal of the charges brought against Baraka—were related to an impending criminal charge,” Martinotti wrote.
Martinotti was answering a narrow question — whether Habba’s public statements fell inside her job as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor. He concluded they did, and that conclusion decided the defamation claim, according to the opinion.
The Justice Department had certified that Habba acted within the scope of her employment when she spoke about Baraka’s arrest, the opinion said. Under a 1988 law, that certification substitutes the United States as the defendant in place of the individual employee.
Baraka argued the statements were too outrageous to have served the government at all, according to the ruling. Martinotti rejected that argument, finding that even a defamatory statement can fall inside a prosecutor’s work.
“[A]lthough a federal prosecutor is certainly not employed to defame criminal defendants, if a federal prosecutor like Habba does so while publicly speaking on criminal activity within her jurisdiction, that is not outrageous for purposes of the scope of employment analysis,” Martinotti wrote.
“Baraka has listed a litany of facts that are, candidly, concerning,” Martinotti wrote.
Among them was Baraka’s allegation that Habba accused him of trespassing while she knew the accusation was false, according to the opinion.
“At most, this merely suggests Habba defamed Baraka with actual malice because she recklessly disregarded the possibility that the arrest and subsequent prosecution were defective and would ultimately be dismissed,” Martinotti wrote.
Actual malice is the standard a public figure must clear to win a defamation case, meaning the speaker knew a statement was false or recklessly ignored whether it was true. Martinotti stopped short of deciding that Baraka had met it, the opinion said.
“Because the Court does not reach the merits of Baraka’s libel claim, the Court does not conclusively hold Baraka has sufficiently alleged actual malice,” the judge wrote in a footnote.
The arrest that produced Habba’s statements happened on May 9, 2025, outside Delaney Hall, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Newark operated by the private prison company GEO Group, according to the ruling.
Baraka went there to join three members of Congress for a press conference after their inspection of the facility, his complaint said. A guard for GEO Group invited him inside the fence, telling him it would “calm the crowd.”
Patel ordered him off the property, and Baraka left, the complaint said. About five minutes later, roughly 20 Homeland Security agents surrounded him and placed him under arrest, and Patel told them to “take him down.”
Baraka was held in federal custody for more than five hours before he appeared before a judge, according to the complaint. People accused of the petty offense of trespassing are ordinarily handed a summons instead.
“The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the Ice detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon,” Habba wrote on her personal social media account before her office had filed any charge. “He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state.”
“He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW,” she wrote, according to the opinion.
“It’s called grandstanding, unfortunately. When you break the law, there’s no grandstanding that will help you,” Habba said in a telephone interview with Fox News later that day, the ruling said.
Habba threatened to charge Baraka with resisting arrest unless he gave up his right to sue for attorneys’ fees, his complaint said. He refused.
Ten days later, Habba moved to drop the trespassing charge, and U.S. Magistrate Judge André Espinosa granted the request on May 21, 2025, according to the opinion.
“The hasty arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, followed swiftly by the dismissal of these trespassing charges a mere 13 days later, suggests a worrisome misstep by your office,” Espinosa said at the hearing.
“Your Office must operate with a higher standard than that,” he added, according to a transcript quoted in Friday’s ruling.
Habba served as one of President Donald Trump’s personal attorneys and as a longtime spokeswoman for him, and she frequently defended him during his 2024 campaign, The Daily Beast reported.
She was sworn in as U.S. attorney for New Jersey in the Oval Office in March 2025, Politico reported. Her interim appointment expired that July, according to Martinotti’s opinion.
Habba resigned in December after a federal appeals court upheld a ruling disqualifying her from the job, Politico reported. She was the first of Trump’s prosecutors to be disqualified.
Baraka pointed to remarks Habba made in the weeks before his arrest about turning New Jersey red and about investigating Democratic state officials who interfere with federal immigration operations, the opinion said. He argued they showed she was pursuing a political agenda rather than justice.
Martinotti was not persuaded. New Jersey law recognizes a dual purpose rule, he wrote, under which an employer remains liable when a worker serves both the job and private interests.
“The Court need not opine on Defendants’ remaining immunity arguments because it dismisses all of Baraka’s claims,” Martinotti wrote in a footnote.
Habba and Patel are left without a ruling on their personal immunity defenses, and the opinion contains no finding that their conduct was lawful. Martinotti dismissed all four counts without prejudice and gave Baraka 21 days to file a third amended complaint, according to the ruling.
“While the Court has reservations regarding Baraka’s ability to allege facts that would survive a motion to dismiss, Baraka may file a third amended complaint because it is not clear that an amendment would be futile at this stage,” Martinotti wrote.
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