Alina Habba Resigns as Trump Loses Yet Another Totally Inept Nominee |
President Trump’s former lawyer and interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba is stepping down from her role in the wake of a 3–0 appeals court ruling that found she was “unlawfully” serving in the position.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit agreed with a lower court’s ruling that Habba was given the U.S. attorney position through a “novel series of legal and personnel moves” and was not legally able to take the job.
“While I was focused on delivering real results, judges in my state took advantage of a flawed blue slip tradition and became weapons for the politicized left.... They joined New Jersey senators, who care more about fighting President Trump than the well being of residents which they serve,” Habba wrote in her resignation letter, posted on X. “As a result of the Third Circuit’s ruling, and to protect the stability and integrity of the office which I love, I have decided to step down in my role as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. But do not mistake compliance for surrender. This decision will not weaken the Justice Department and it will not weaken me.”
Habba was originally meant to leave her interim position over the summer, as New Jersey federal judges refused to extend her 120-day appointment as U.S. attorney. But the Trump administration fired Desiree Grace, the U.S. attorney first assistant and Habba’s planned successor, prior to the end of Habba’s appointment, purposefully leaving the role unfilled. It then made Habba first assistant, allowing her to take the role of acting U.S. attorney without a Senate confirmation—which she may have likely failed.
“My fight will now stretch across the country. As we wait for further review of the court’s ruling, I will continue to serve the Department of Justice as the Senior Advisor to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys,” Habba’s statement concluded. “Make no mistake, you can take the girl out of New Jersey, but you cannot take New Jersey out of the girl.”
It’s not looking so good for former Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter—or any Democratic appointees at federal agencies.
While hearing arguments Monday in a case challenging Slaughter’s removal earlier this year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed primed to overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 case that established Congress can pass laws limiting the president’s ability to fire executive officials of independent federal agencies.
The court’s six conservative justices voiced concerns that agencies wielding executive power weren’t really accountable to the executive, Bloomberg Law reported. “Tomorrow we could have the Labor Commission, the Education Commission, the Environmental Commission, rather than Departments of Interior and so forth,” warned Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The court’s liberal justices weren’t convinced. Justice Elena Kagan said allowing Slaughter’s removal would place “massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”
Only Justice Brett Kavanaugh voiced “concerns” about handing over the Federal Reserve, which is meant to set monetary policy without political interference.
The Supreme Court previously approved Donald Trump’s emergency request to remove Slaughter, despite the rulings of two lower courts and a law stating that presidents may only legally remove FTC commissioners for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” At the time, Kagan torched her colleagues for empowering Trump to remove “any member he wishes, for any reason or no reason at all.”
“And he may thereby extinguish the agencies’ bipartisanship and independence,” Kagan wrote in her opinion. Slaughter was the only Democrat left on the FTC board.
Breaking with precedent on Humphrey will allow Trump to continue his unfettered firing campaign against Democratic appointees, but it would also grant the president unprecedented control over agencies that regulate the economy, the stock market, as well as federal campaign finance and communication rules.
The Supreme Court previously allowed Trump to oust Gwynne Wilcox at the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris at the Merit Systems Protection Board—whose terms weren’t due to expire until 2029—as well as three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
President Trump has been quite upset over six Democratic legislators telling members of the military that they have to refuse illegal orders, calling the lawmakers seditious and saying their statements are “punishable by DEATH.”
But as it turns out, Attorney General Pam Bondi has said the same thing.
Last year, as a lawyer for the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, Bondi filed a brief with the Supreme Court writing, “Military officers are required not to carry out unlawful orders.”
“The military would not carry out a patently unlawful order from the president to kill nonmilitary targets. Indeed, service members are required not to do so,” Bondi wrote in the brief, filed to support Trump in his effort to convince the Supreme Court to grant him immunity from prosecution on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Bondi was in fact trying to cover for one of Trump’s lawyers in January 2024, who was asked by Judge Florence Y. Pan in federal appeals court, “Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?”
D. John Sauer, who is now Trump’s solicitor general, said no, seeming to hurt his case. Bondi’s friend-of-the-court-brief was meant to cover for Sauer by arguing that Pan’s hypothetical question wasn’t realistic because military officers would disobey such an order.
“A president cannot order an elite military unit to kill a political rival, and the members of the military are required not to carry out such an unlawful order,” Bondi wrote in her brief. “It would be a crime to do so.”
When the case reached the Supreme Court, conservative Justice Samuel Alito agreed.
“I don’t want to slander SEAL Team 6,” Alito said to laughter in the courtroom. “Because they’re—no, seriously, they’re honorable. They’re honorable officers, and they are bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice not to obey unlawful orders.”
While the president won his immunity case, the six Democrats have been targeted by Trump’s supporters with violent threats and unrelenting attacks from the White House. And Bondi is not the only administration official who has affirmed that the military should disobey illegal orders—Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is on video saying the same thing in 2016. But to this administration, Trump can’t break the law, only the people who disobey him do.
GOP Representative Brian Fitzpatrick sat down with........