Donald Trump has just rewarded his lawyer Alina Habba with a plum job in his new administration: counselor to the president.
The president-elect made the announcement Sunday on his Truth Social account, calling her “a tireless advocate for Justice, a fierce Defender of the Rule of Law, and an invaluable Advisor to my Campaign and Transition Team.”
There was speculation that Habba would be chosen as Trump’s press secretary, but ultimately Trump decided to go with his campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Habba has built a reputation going beyond Trump’s lawyer as one of his foremost defenders in the press, even backing him up when he spread conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene.
Well before that, Habba was speaking to the press during Trump’s hush-money trial earlier this year, offering defenses for Trump’s falling asleep in court as well as his penchant for holding press clippings. In many cases, though, she misspoke in court and actually seemed to hurt Trump’s case, even getting basic legal terms like “due process” wrong.
Habba’s skill as a lawyer is questionable at best. Representing the president-elect in a defamation lawsuit from writer E. Jean Carroll, Habba’s opening statement seemed to undermine Trump’s case from the start. During the trial itself, Habba was reprimanded by the judge on multiple occasions.
Habba had a hush-money scandal of her own involving a former employee at Trump’s New Jersey golf club, which she ultimately escaped thanks to a court settlement. Now, as she moves into the White House, Habba will have to brush up on her legal skills, or hope that Trump makes her an unofficial spokesperson, otherwise she’s going to have a rough time.
Trump wants anyone involved with the House January 6 investigation committee in jail ASAP.
In an interview aired Sunday on Meet the Press—Trump’s first since his election night win—the president-elect laid out the framework for his draconian vision, starting with his revenge list.
“I think those people committed a major crime, and [Liz] Cheney was behind it,” he said of the House select committee tasked with investigating January 6. “And so was Benny Thompson. Everybody on that committee.… For what they did, yeah, honestly, they should go to jail.”
The committee, run by the aforementioned Cheney and Thompson, as well as six other Democrats and another Republican, was shut down when Republicans won the House back in 2023.
The committee accurately deduced that Trump did indeed incite acts of violence during his attempt to hold onto the office after his 2020 defeat, which he refuses to acknowledge to this day. He also accused the committee of deleting and destroying evidence regarding January 6, a claim with no evidence.
Cheney responded to Trump’s threat in a statement to The Washington Post. “Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes,” she said. “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
Former Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, the other Republican on the committee, also fired back at the president-elect. “If Donald wants to pursue this vindictive fantasy, I say bring it on,” he stated on his Substack. “I’m not intimidated by a man whose actions on January 6th showed a cowardly disregard for democracy and the rule of law.”
In the Meet the Press interview, Trump went on to express distaste for special counsel Jack Smith, who was heading the investigation into January 6, saying that he would let attorney general nominee Pam Bondi “do what she wants to do” to Smith.
Trump used the entire election cycle to fill out his “prosecute and imprison” list, and is so deep in his lies about January 6 that he’s convinced himself of his own victimhood. It’s us who are the problem, not him. When asked if he would finally concede the 2020 election now that the dust has settled and he’s won again, Trump replied, “No, why would I do that?”
Various outlets have reported that President Biden has put preemptive pardons on the table for anyone who might be on one of Trump’s lists.
Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to take over the FBI, has put together an enemies list composed of members of the so-called “deep state.” But he may have already ruined his own plans to prosecute any of those people.
Paul Rosenzweig, the former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, thinks that Patel has doomed his revenge plot by openly discussing it, he wrote in The Bulwark Friday.
Rosenzweig explains that if accused criminals can prove that their prosecution is vindictive, they have grounds to rebut the charges. Usually, that’s very hard for defendants to prove, but Patel’s many interviews and the long enemies list in his book Government Gangsters provide that proof.
“If Kash Patel becomes director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as President Trump has suggested he should, he will be the poster child of vindictiveness—and his infamous public declarations of retribution may lead to the dismissal of any politically motivated prosecutions he initiates against his enemies list of ‘Deep State’ opponents,” Rosenzweig writes.
Even if Patel has actual credible evidence against any of the people on that list, he has preemptively hurt those efforts, according to Rosenzweig.
“A defendant can still succeed if he or she can present direct evidence........