Habba’s allegiance to Trump has never been in question. It’s at the root of many of the complaints about her—and the fears that Habba, who had no prior experience as a prosecutor, will use the US attorney job to pursue a partisan political agenda. Her critics see Habba as epitomizing what it takes to get ahead in Trump’s orbit: looking the part, and a willingness to relentlessly defend the president, especially on TV. “It’s not a question of hating her,” Cobb says. “It’s a question of her being grossly unfit for the job.”
Habba is a naturally magnetic presence, which she amplifies with snug clothes and a bejeweled crucifix necklace. At a 2024 Trump campaign rally in Madison Square Garden, she shimmied onto the stage wearing a sequined jacket whose red and white letters spelled out MAGA. Yet she sounds genuinely surprised at the arena in which she has become famous, claiming she had little interest in politics and wanted to stay under the radar. “It was a decision [to represent Trump] that I took really seriously, and I had a feeling it would change my life,” she says. “But I didn’t really understand the gravity, in hindsight, of how much it would.”
Somehow Habba has become quite comfortable in the partisan fray. “She has been at President Trump’s side for years; he trusts her implicitly,” says Gor. “She will deliver in spades as US attorney because, similar to the president, she prioritizes winning.”
How Habba defines winning is the controversial part. Three days after Trump announced her appointment as top prosecutor, she told Jack Posobiec, a conservative podcaster, “We could turn New Jersey red…. Hopefully, while I’m there, I can help that cause.” Shortly afterward, her office filed trespassing charges against Newark mayor Ras Baraka and assault charges against New Jersey congressperson LaMonica McIver related to a confrontation outside a Newark ICE facility (to which McIver has pleaded not guilty), and in July, she said she was launching an investigation into New Jersey governor Phil Murphy after he made remarks suggesting he would house a migrant. The three elected officials are Democrats.
“Her nomination should have been dead in the water the minute she said that on the podcast,” says Joyce White Vance, a former federal prosecutor and an MSNBC legal analyst. “It is absolutely disqualifying. Nominations have died for far less. If you’re looking for single points of failure in the Republican Party that demonstrate how badly they’ve been corrupted by Trump, that’s one of them.”
The Baraka charges have since been dropped, and Habba tells me she does not plan on using the judicial system to make New Jersey more Republican. “If I wanted to do that, I would have run myself,” she says. “There’s a governor’s race happening right now, and I did not run.”
Instead, Habba is deep into an equally bruising campaign: to retain her job. In early July, Trump nominated her to a full term as US attorney, but the US senators from New Jersey, both Democrats, signaled they would block her confirmation. Then, federal judges ruled Habba had to vacate the job and appointed an experienced federal prosecutor as an interim replacement. Trump’s team countered by firing the replacement, withdrawing Habba’s nomination to take the post permanently, and deeming Habba the first assistant US attorney…who, because the US attorney seat is vacant, is automatically promoted. At least temporarily. The wrangling has resonance beyond New Jersey, because the Trump administration has used similar maneuvers to appoint prosecutors in offices from upstate New York to Los Angeles. It’s part of an effort to exert greater control over the criminal justice system that recently saw the president push out a Virginia US attorney, Erik Siebert, after Siebert reportedly declined to file charges for mortgage fraud against New York attorney general Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey, due to insufficient evidence.
The contours and stakes may be new, but life around Habba is rarely dull. On a single day in late August, a New York appeals court tossed out the $454 million civil fraud judgment against Trump (though it declined to overturn the fraud case), handing Habba a large measure of vindication; three hours later, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that Habba is holding the US attorney’s job illegally. The Department of Justice is appealing the latter ruling. At the center of a storm, though, Habba is unfazed, even floating a headline for this story: “‘Alina Habba isn’t going anywhere.’”
