Does acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba have the authority to continue carrying out her duties? A federal judge ruled last month that she doesn’t – and Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), by far the most high-profile defendant targeted by Habba’s office, agrees with him.
Asked today whether she thought U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann was correct in ruling that the maneuvers President Donald Trump used to keep Habba in office were illegitimate, McIver – who is currently being prosecuted by Habba for allegedly assaulting federal officers at an immigrant detention center – said “absolutely.”
“This is what this administration does,” McIver said. “They are breaking and bending and corrupting the rules to their likeness, for people who are loyal to them. It has nothing to do with merit, with experience, with qualification, with rules – they do whatever they want to do, and use it to benefit them.”
“At the end of the day, I’m not surprised that people are challenging what they did to try to keep her in place, because, in their mindset, it was wrong, and it’s not the normal process,” she continued. “We’ll just see how it plays out.”
Habba’s authority to serve as U.S. Attorney was challenged over the summer by two New Jersey defendants who argued that the steps the Trump administration took on her behalf, including firing a different acting U.S. Attorney appointed by New Jersey’s federal judges, rendered her ineligible to serve. Brann concurred in an August 21 ruling, though he immediately stayed his own order pending a now-ongoing appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
The challenge is entirely separate from the case revolving around McIver, who got into a scuffle with immigration officials in May during an oversight visit at the Delaney Hall detention facility. McIver has called the controversial charges an attempt at political intimidation, and her legal team has filed several motions asking a federal judge to throw out the indictment in its entirety because of its allegedly political motivations and its connections to her official legislative duties.
Those motions, however, notably made no mention of the questions surrounding Habba’s legitimacy as U.S. Attorney; McIver said today that she hasn’t had discussions about linking her case with the challenge to Habba’s authority in any official way.
“Right now, we haven’t thought about that,” she said. “I’m highly focused on getting my case through the process so that I can 150% get back to focusing on the work of the 10th congressional district. I am already 100% focused on that, but I want my other 50% back.”
