Alina Habba’s time as an interim U.S. attorney has officially gone from messy to disastrous, and now a federal appeals court has confirmed that some of her actions weren’t even legal. The ruling added yet another setback to a string of bad news that has followed Donald Trump’s former lawyer over the past week.
As MS NOW’s Jordan Rubin reported, a federal appellate panel ruled that a district court was right to disqualify Habba from serving as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey. The decision delivered another loss to the Trump administration on an issue still popping up in U.S. attorney’s offices across the country. For Habba, it was another public blow to her credibility.
And that wasn’t even the only hit she took. Just days earlier, Politico revealed that a different federal appeals court upheld a penalty of nearly $1 million against Trump and Habba. The court agreed they engaged in “sanctionable conduct” when they filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey that judges said never should have existed in the first place.
“Many of Trump’s and Habba’s legal arguments were indeed frivolous,” wrote Chief Judge William Pryor Jr. of the 11th Circuit. His panel was unanimous. It included both a Trump appointee and a Biden appointee who all agreed the lawsuit was beyond baseless.
The case in question dates back to March 2022, when Habba helped file what many legal analysts immediately tagged as one of Trump’s most bizarre lawsuits. It targeted Clinton and nearly 50 other Democrats and officials. The Washington Post said the lawsuit read less like a genuine legal filing and more like a political press release. The report also pointed out that the document was packed with conspiracy theories, debunked claims, and factual errors.
The judge overseeing the case seemed stunned that it was ever filed at all. The ruling against Habba described her arguments as “political grievances masquerading as legal claims.” The judge went further, saying, “This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it.” That line has since followed Habba everywhere.
Habba appealed the sanctions, but a three judge panel shut that down quickly. The panel included two judges appointed by Republican presidents, which made the ruling even harder for her supporters to dismiss. Their message was the same as the original judge’s; she earned the punishment.
In most eras, being hit with nearly a million dollars in sanctions and getting shut down by multiple courts would be enough to seriously damage a lawyer’s career. It would likely end future federal appointments and close doors in legal circles. But Habba is expected to maintain her standing in Trump-aligned politics.
Her relationship with the Trump world isn’t likely to change in 2025, and she will almost certainly remain a familiar face on conservative media. Inside that world, she still gets treated like a trusted legal voice even when the courts say otherwise.