Trump taps his former defense attorney, Alina Habba, to be New Jersey's top federal prosecutor
President Donald Trump named his one-time defense attorney and current White House counselor Alina Habba to be the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday named his one-time defense attorney and current White House counselor Alina Habba to be the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey.
Habba, who turns 41 Tuesday, takes over the interim post from John Giordano, whom the president said he's naming to be the U.S. ambassador for the southwestern African country of Namibia.
A partner in a small New Jersey law firm near Trump’s Bedminster golf course, Habba served as a senior adviser for Trump's political action committee, defended him in court in several civil lawsuits and acted as a spokesperson last year as he volleyed between courtrooms and the campaign trail.
U.S. attorneys often have experience as prosecutors, including at the state or local level. Many, including the acting U.S. attorneys in Brooklyn and Manhattan, have worked in the offices they now lead.
Habba said she looked forwards to working with Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue the president's agenda of “putting America first,” and going after the people “we should be going after.” She criticized Democrats Sen. Cory Booker and Gov. Phil Murphy for their stewardship of the state.
“If you look at what happened in crime, what’s going on in Newark, what’s going on in Camden, this has been a neglected state. It is one of the most populated states for its size and it needs to stop. We’re gonna do a bang up job,” Habba said Monday.
Spokespeople for Booker and Murphy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Camden officials said earlier this year that violent crime rates reached a 55-year low, crediting the county police department. Officials in Newark, the state's largest city, said late last year that homicide rates had fallen but other crime levels had increased in 2024.
Habba was one of Trump’s most visible defense attorneys, appearing on cable TV news as his “legal spokesperson.” She represented Trump in 2024 in the defamation case involving E. Jean Carroll.
But Habba has had limited federal court experience, practicing mainly in state-level courts. During the Carroll trial, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan chided Habba for botching procedure, misstating the law asking about off-limits topics and objecting after he ruled.
Habba and Trump were fined nearly $1 million in 2023 for filing what a Florida judge called a bogus lawsuit against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Habba has also represented Siggy Flicker, formerly of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” in 2021 as she sought to restore her Facebook account, which the reality star claimed had been disabled after she made a post wishing First Lady Melania Trump a happy birthday.
Habba was the plaintiff’s attorney in 2021 a defamation lawsuit against a Portuguese weekly magazine, which was later dismissed.
Giordano was sworn in as New Jersey's interim U.S. attorney earlier this month. He previously served as a counselor to the assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. Giordano also served as a federal prosecutor in Virginia.
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Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Will Weissert in Washington and Michael R. Sisak in New York contributed to this report.
