Alina Habba Has Signed Dozens of Indictments. Her Authority to Do So Is Dubious.

Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney in New Jersey whose White House appointment has already been deemed unlawful by a judge, has signed off on at least 28 indictments after being told she doesn’t have the authority to do so.

In doing so, she has put those and dozens of other prosecutions at risk, according to several former employees of the office.

“There’s a risk. But that office apparently thinks it’s worth the risk,” one source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told NOTUS.

The cases run the gambit, from illegal ownership of firearms and fentanyl dealing to securities fraud and tax dodging. But they’re all in a legal gray zone ever since defense lawyers in New Jersey successfully challenged her appointment.

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NOTUS reviewed more than 140 criminal cases filed in recent months which show how Habba has largely brushed aside explicit court warnings about her dubious authority. An analysis of those cases show that more than 39 indictments could be contested, because she signed them after July 1 — the point at which a judge deemed she acted “without lawful authority.” Twenty-eight of those came after the judge’s ruling in August.

It’s the latest sign that the Department of Justice has prioritized keeping those closest to President Donald Trump in positions of power, regardless of how that could affect actual operations. Judges have disqualified Trump-picked U.S. attorneys for similar reasons in Nevada last month and Central California just this week, putting prosecutions there into question as well. In Habba’s case, the White House has been steadfast in keeping one of Trump’s most loyal allies overseeing all federal investigations in a district that happens to be home to his Bedminster golf club and presidential summer retreat.

Longtime prosecutors in the office have become increasingly uncomfortable with Habba’s decisions and tactics, sources said.

For many, it started in April, when Habba appeared in a U.S. Marshals’ vest for arrests in Newark. Two former employees said the moment raised eyebrows in the office because it caused concern that Habba unnecessarily made herself a potential witness in a case she’d oversee, subjecting her to possibly having to testify in court.

That same month she also quickly and quietly disbanded the only civil rights division at a regional U.S. attorney’s office in the country, which prosecuted police abuse and hate crimes. There was no public announcement, and most of the lawyers in the office had to learn about it on their own when an email went out announcing several reassignments, according to one former employee. Of the eight lawyers on the team, half have left the office. The office is still doing civil rights cases, but not with a dedicated unit.

“The District of New Jersey continues to fight any and all violations of civil rights,” Habba said on Friday, declining to comment on other matters.

Weeks later, the DOJ rescinded a hard-earned consent order that the civil rights team had won against Lakeland Bank, New Jersey’s second-largest financial institution, over allegations it had engaged in discriminatory “redlining.” The court filing asking to pull back the agreement was only signed by Main Justice lawyers in Washington headquarters and didn’t include a single New Jersey prosecutor. The DOJ declined to comment.

Then in May, according to a former employee, Habba showed up at an alumni event for prosecutors where she professed she wasn’t the TV personality who’d been a Trump campaign staple on Fox News in 2024 and assured everyone she wasn’t “political” — a comment widely seen as an attempt to repair the damage she’d caused weeks earlier when she told far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec, “We could turn New Jersey red.”

Two former employees noted that Habba, for months, has been followed around her own office by a U.S. Marshals Service security detail — an unusual move that was later copied by Lindsey Halligan, the newly installed top prosecutor in eastern Virginia. They even followed Habba to that cocktail alumni party. The Marshals Service confirmed the detail’s assignment last week.

A person familiar with that situation told NOTUS that Habba has received several death threats and had two people show up at her home in recent weeks. In August, an Orlando man named Salvatore Russotto pleaded guilty to “transmission of interstate threats to injure” after getting indicted for making posts on X in May about Habba that said “86 that bitch” and “I HOPE YOU DIE A PAINFUL DEATH.”

Still, Matthew Fogg, a retired marshal, told NOTUS that he’d never heard of that kind of security detail for a U.S. attorney in their own office.

“Normally, if you’re in your own office, that’s a secure location. There’s no need for security on them like that,” he said.

Others were irked when Habba replaced the office’s longtime legal assistant, who’d retired after 36 years there, with her own 23-year-old assistant from Habba’s short stint at the Trump White House.

But those events paled in comparison to the reaction from federal prosecutors when Habba and top DOJ officials engineered her return after her term was up in July, according to three former employees and several others in touch with those prosecutors.

In the summer, federal judges exercised their power to appoint Habba’s replacement by electing Desiree Grace, a career prosecutor who had until then held the No. 2 spot in that office as first assistant U.S. attorney. But Grace was immediately ousted by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who granted Habba the title of “special attorney” and gave her Grace’s job — essentially putting Habba right back, awkwardly, as her own deputy.

That unceremonious firing of Grace delayed a high-profile gang murder trial by two months, over the objections of defense lawyers, because Grace was on the prosecution team. Brooke Barnett, one of the lawyers in the case, had spent weeks preparing for the major court battle and denounced the unceremonious way Grace was pushed out.

“It’s unfortunate that her position was weaponized. She really got caught in the crosshairs. She’s a stellar opponent. Her reputation definitely precedes her. She’s fair but tough. She’s all about the process,” Barnett told NOTUS.

Habba now signs off on all the official paperwork as “acting United States attorney and special attorney.” She tends to sign them herself with a digital signature. But in at least 13 indictments since mid-August, Habba — who has invoked the MAGA rallying cry over then-President Joe Biden’s use of an “autopen” to sign pardons — has had subordinates digitally sign for her.

The initial challenge came from Thomas Mirigliano, a solo Manhattan defense lawyer representing Julien Giraud Jr., a man investigators claim had a brick of cocaine, other drugs and a silver Taurus .357 magnum revolver in his bedroom. Mirigliano was listening to a podcast featuring Andrew Weissmann, the MAGA-reviled former DOJ prosecutor who speaks out against the Trump administration.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a great fucking idea.’ And because I have big balls, I said, ‘Fuck it. I’m gonna do it.’ I’m not a cocktail party guy. I have a lot of business in New Jersey, however, I don’t really give a shit. I just have no allegiance to anyone except my clients. And I think I have gained respect for that,” he told NOTUS. “I have no problem saying what needs to be said. I don’t pull punches.”

Mirigliano cited the same controversial decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that tanked the Jack Smith special counsel case against Trump for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, writing that “any prosecutorial actions taken under an invalid and unconstitutional supervisory appointment must be unwound.” It was a court decision Habba once called “the first step in ending the weaponization of our justice system.”

On Aug. 21, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann issued a searing 77-page opinion that determined Habba “is not currently qualified to exercise the functions and duties of the office in an acting capacity” and “must be disqualified from participating in any ongoing cases.”

A NOTUS review of hundreds of court filings found that the Justice Department quickly pivoted to try to contain the damage. On the same day the order was issued, Habba signed off on four different indictments — three for felony gun possession and another for cocaine dealing — except this time, right above her name in the signature block appeared that of a high-ranking official: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

That slight tweak is meant to infer that the indictments were filed with the express approval of the second-highest DOJ official, which would seem nearly unbelievable, said Rutgers University law professor David Noll. Generally, top DOJ officials have no involvement in run-of-the-mill criminal matters, save for the occasional high-profile public corruption or death penalty cases.

“They’re trying to make it seem like he’s ultimately responsible for the filing and to make any defects in her appointment immaterial by putting a higher up on the paperwork. This is all such wackadoodle, unprecedented territory. I’d be surprised if there’s an answer in case law as to whether the courts would accept it,” he told NOTUS.

Her office took the peculiar step of including Blanche’s name on a meth-dealing plea deal signed the same day as the Pennsylvania judge’s order deemed Habba’s appointment unlawful. They’ve repeated that in other plea deals, too.

The matter is serious enough that the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey has thrown its weight behind the legal challenge to her authority, which is now on appeal. Arguing alongside them is Abbe Lowell, the same lawyer defending New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump-driven criminal charges in Virginia, where he is similarly challenging Halligan’s appointment there.

When a three-judge panel at the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals held arguments Oct. 20, jurists seemed doubtful that Habba could remain in her position — and couldn’t get a straight answer from the DOJ about when exactly her time would be up. One judge noted that Congress was “clear” that an interim U.S. attorney can only serve for 120 days, only to have Henry Whitaker, the DOJ’s counselor to the attorney general, float the idea of “successive 120-day appointments” — while still insisting that the Trump administration is “not asking for a limitless power.”

At one point during the hearing, Appellate Judge D. Brooks Smith voiced his frustration.

“Can you come up with an example of any time that such a concatenation of events has occurred with respect to the appointment of a United States attorney?” he asked.

“I guess I cannot,” Whitaker responded.

Habba was in the courtroom.

It’s rare for the head of an entire U.S. attorney’s office to show up in court unless absolutely necessary. But Habba has made it a point to show up when her authority is challenged, according to several attorneys who spoke to NOTUS.

Two said New Jersey defense lawyers across the state were alerted after Habba showed up at a district court hearing on Oct. 1, where she stared down Chris Adams, a lawyer arguing for her disqualification. Another person in the room, who did not want to be quoted, contested that description.

In court papers, Adams has argued that Habba’s “continued supervision” of a tax-dodging case violates a man’s constitutional “right to be prosecuted only by a validly authorized United States Attorney.” And he called into question Habba’s simple fix of slapping Blanche’s name on filings.

“There is no indication that the assistant United States attorneys communicated with Todd

Blanche specifically about Mr. Cifelli’s case and whether he is lawfully supervising them in

these affairs,” Adams wrote.

One defense lawyer, who preferred not to be named, said he thinks Habba is illegally leading her office, but he’s chosen not to challenge her appointment due to fear of political blowback.

“I think at some point soon, she won’t be there,” he said. “But someone who has allegiance to her and this Justice Department will be.”