Another one of President Trump's former personal lawyers has been appointed to a senior Justice Department job. Alina Habba, who has served as a presidential counselor in recent months, was named as the interim US attorney for New Jersey on Monday, Politico reports. "She will fight tirelessly to secure a Legal System that is both 'Fair and Just' for the wonderful people of New Jersey," Trump said in a Truth Social post. He said John Giordano, the state's current interim US attorney, would be nominated as the new ambassador to Namibia.
Habba said Monday that she looks forward to "making sure that we further the president's agenda of putting America first, cleaning up mess, and going after the people that we should be going after, not the people that are falsely accused," ABC News reports. She declined to answer questions from reporters about why she had been appointed to the role on an interim basis instead of permanently. Habba has represented Trump in three trials in recent years, including the two E. Jean Carroll defamation trials. In 2023, a judge ordered Trump and Habba to pay almost $1 million to Hillary Clinton and dozens of others named in a lawsuit the judge called "completely frivolous."
Habba, who started working for Trump in 2021 after meeting him through his New Jersey golf club, has no prosecutorial experience, but she will be overseeing around 150 prosecutors in her new role as the chief federal law enforcement official for the state, the New York Times reports. The Times describes the role as one that has been a "political and legal launchpad" for several prominent conservatives, including Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Maryanne Trump Barry, the president's eldest sister, was an assistant US attorney in New Jersey for almost a decade before she became a federal judge in 1983. (More Alina Habba stories.)
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