New Jersey

The firing of a veteran prosecutor in New Jersey escalates Trump’s war with the courts

A battle over judges’ power to fill a federal prosecutor vacancy could create a legitimacy crisis.


Attorney Alina Habba is joined by former President Donald Trump in January 2024.
Alina Habba, former lawyer for President Donald Trump, is at the center of battle to lead New Jersey's U.S. Attorney's Office. | Mary Altaffer/AP

By KYLE CHENEY and RY RIVARD
07/23/2025 02:36 PM EDT

The Trump administration opened a new front in its war with the courts this week — and fired a veteran federal prosecutor in the process — in a dramatic tussle over the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office. … Now it’s not clear who is in charge. … Federal judges exercised a 160-year-old power to select a temporary prosecutor on Tuesday to lead the office, following President Donald Trump’s failure to win quick Senate confirmation for his pick: his former personal lawyer Alina Habba.

Within hours, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche unloaded on the group of mostly Democratic-appointed judges and their pick, Desiree Leigh Grace, a registered Republican who was, until this week, the top career prosecutor in the office.
The judges, Blanche and Bondi said, have gone “rogue” and are seeking to “threaten” Trump’s power to select prosecutors. That power, though, is tempered by requirements that presidential picks must be confirmed by the Senate.

Presidents can name U.S. attorneys on an interim basis without Senate confirmation. But once that interim period expires, a longstanding federal law authorizes federal district judges to appoint a new prosecutor for the role until the Senate confirms a presidential nominee. … No president has directly tested the authority of judges to make such appointments — perhaps until now. Shortly after the district judges in New Jersey tapped Grace, Bondi fired her from the Department of Justice, where she’d climbed the ladder over the past nine years.

It’s not clear Bondi’s gambit will succeed in blocking Grace’s appointment, but it likely presages a legal tug-of-war over who can lead the federal prosecutors’ office in New Jersey, muddling and possibly jeopardizing criminal cases across the state.

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