Alina Habba went from being a personal attorney for Donald Trump to being an interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey during Trump’s second presidency. But her 120-day term ended, and appointing to that position permanently would require a vote in the U.S. Senate.
On July 24, Politico reported that the Trump administration believed it had found a “workaround” to keep Habba in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). But a week later, Politico is reporting that Habba’s foes have found a new argument against her — one using ideas expressed by Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who was assigned to former special counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago documents case and became a major thorn in Smith’s side.
Politico reporters Ry Rivard and Kyle Cheney, in an article published on July 31, explain, “A criminal defendant seeking to torpedo President Donald Trump’s top federal prosecutor in New Jersey is drawing inspiration from an unusual source: U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. The defendant, Julien Giraud Jr., argues that the Trump appointee’s bombshell ruling last summer dismissing a federal criminal case against Trump by finding that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional applies equally to Trump’s temporary U.S. attorney pick, Alina Habba.”
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Giraud’s attorney, Thomas Mirigliano, laid out his argument against Habba in a court filing on Wednesday, July 30.
“As Judge Cannon explained in Trump,” Mirigliano wrote, “when executive officials deliberately engineer an appointment in violation of statutory and constitutional mandates, the only effective remedy is dismissal or, at the very least, disqualification of the unconstitutionally appointed officer and her subordinates.”
Rivard and Cheney note, however, that “Mirigliano’s bid is a long shot.”
“The case, which is pending before U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann, (a Barack) Obama appointee based in Pennsylvania, challenges Habba’s authority to run the office and prosecute criminal cases,” Rivard and Cheney report. “Brann is not yet sold that questions around Habba’s appointment should derail ongoing prosecutions that have largely been carried out by assistant U.S. attorneys. However, the issue has roiled federal criminal cases in New Jersey while the matter remains unresolved.”
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The Politico reporters add, “Cannon last summer concluded in a 93-page ruling that Smith’s appointment violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution and, in turn, she dismissed the federal criminal case against Trump charging him with amassing highly sensitive national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago and then obstructing government efforts to reclaim them.”
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Read the full Politico article at this link.