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Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, stepped down Monday as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey after a federal appeals court ruled her appointment unlawful, intensifying scrutiny of the administration’s handling of top federal prosecutor posts.
Habba announced her resignation in a statement on X, saying she was leaving “to protect the stability and integrity of the office which I love,” but insisted that people should “not mistake compliance for surrender.” She vowed to return to the job if the ruling is overturned.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who accepted the resignation, said the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling made it “untenable for her to effectively run her office.” Bondi appointed Habba as a senior adviser on U.S. attorneys while the Justice Department appeals the decision. “We are confident it will be reversed,” Bondi wrote.
The Justice Department said three senior officials would divide leadership duties in New Jersey while the appeal proceeds.
The move marks the latest fallout from a legal battle over Habba’s appointment, which a federal judge in August found was the result of “a novel series of legal and personnel moves.” Judge Matthew W. Brann ruled that Trump administration officials manipulated interim appointment rules to keep Habba in office beyond the 120-day limit without Senate confirmation.
Trump first installed Habba as interim U.S. attorney on March 24, following another interim appointment made just weeks prior. She was sworn in four days later. But after the Senate did not act on her June nomination for the permanent post, the district’s judges exercised their authority to appoint her deputy instead.
Bondi then removed that newly installed U.S. attorney and designated Habba as “Special Attorney to the Attorney General” before placing her into the deputy slot — a move that allowed her to function as acting U.S. attorney despite the prior court action. Brann ruled the maneuver illegal and said Habba “must be disqualified from participating in any ongoing cases.”
A 3rd Circuit panel upheld the decision last week, warning that allowing the appointment to stand would enable the Justice Department to circumvent Senate confirmation “indefinitely.” “This should raise a red flag,” the court wrote.
Habba criticized the judiciary in her statement Monday, saying judges had become “weapons of the politicized left.”
Her contested appointment had already rippled through New Jersey’s federal courts. Some criminal defendants challenged her legal authority, and several judges delayed proceedings amid uncertainty about whether cases she supervised might later be overturned.
The administration faces similar turbulence elsewhere. Last month, a federal judge dismissed indictments filed under Lindsey Halligan — another former Trump lawyer serving as acting U.S. attorney in Virginia — after deeming her appointment improper. A grand jury separately rejected charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding prosecutors had failed to meet the threshold for probable cause.
Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump blamed Habba’s departure on the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition, which allows home-state senators to stall nominees. Habba has said New Jersey’s two Democratic senators would not meet with her.
“It makes it impossible to appoint a judge or U.S. attorney, and it’s a shame,” Trump said, calling on Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to end the practice. Grassley has defended blue slips this year, saying he wants nominees to have “success, not failure.”
