By MATT FRIEDMAN, Politico, 12/09/2025
Alina Habba has resigned as New Jersey’s Acting U.S. attorney, a week after the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed she was serving in the post illegally.
She did not help turn New Jersey red.
But while Habba in her goodbye message took credit for Camden’s first murder-free summer in 50 years, her eight and a half months in the post will likely be remembered for her brazenly political approach to the job, and the extraordinary measures the Trump administration used to keep her in it after she was rejected by New Jersey’s U.S. senators and its district court judges. Or perhaps for the stunning trespassing arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and the quickly dropped charges, followed by the still-standing felony assault charges against U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver.
Habba will remain in President Donald Trump’s administration, she said, as a “senior adviser to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys.” And Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department “will seek further review of this decision,” with plans to put Habba back in charge of the office if it’s overturned. Meanwhile, Trump complained about blue slips — the tradition that requires home-state senators to sign off on certain nominees. “If I put up George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to be U.S. attorney in New Jersey or to be U.S. attorney in Virginia, we have Democrat senators, they will not approve them,” he said.
Normally, Habba would have been temporarily replaced by her first assistant U.S. attorney. But last I checked, Habba was the first assistant U.S. attorney — a job Habba took thanks to Trump’s firing of widely respected career prosecutor Desiree Grace, in the effort to stay on as acting U.S. attorney. Four federal judges have now rejected that strategy.
The Department of Justice did not mention a new temporary U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Instead, they listed a trio of lawyers — Philip Lamparello, Jordan Fox and Ari Fontecchio — who will take over core office functions. As far as I can tell, all three have pretty strictly legal backgrounds, though Lamparello’s father, Ralph, at whose firm he worked until taking a job at the U.S. Attorney’s Office this September, is well-known for his work for Democrats in Hudson County. No word on whether Trump will seek a U.S. attorney nominee who might have a chance at approval by New Jersey’s senators, though he’s already ruled out George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
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