The most chaotic place in the Garden State right now may be the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey.
In the year or so since President Donald Trump retook the White House, we’ve had one U.S. attorney last less than one month before being shipped off to Namibia; another one installed even though her only qualification seemed to be an unyielding allegiance to the president; a protracted legal fight to keep her in office longer than the law allows; a nasty and public war between the White House and New Jersey’s federal judges; an admission by federal prosecutors that court orders in immigration cases are routinely violated; and now another legal battle over whether the president has to abide by the kinds of checks and balances that seemed to suit other presidents just fine.
New group aims to hold Trenton accountable on LGBTQ issues
Enough is enough.
The latest news on this front came Monday when U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann — the chief judge of Pennsylvania’s middle district, on loan to New Jersey to oversee our U.S. attorney mess — ruled that the White House’s strange decision to put three people in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s office was illegal because there are laws that govern U.S. attorney appointments and the Trump administration did not follow them.
And now Brann is threatening to have federal cases dismissed because the White House insists on ignoring the law here.
“Why does the fate of thousands of criminal prosecutions in this District potentially rest on the legitimacy of an unprecedented and byzantine leadership structure? The Government tells us: the President doesn’t like that he cannot simply appoint whomever he wants,” he wrote.
An ominous threat. And Brann said he’s issuing it because he’s been here before with the Trump administration. About seven months ago, he ruled that Trump’s previous pick to run the office, Trump personal attorney Alina Habba, was disqualified from serving because the administration kept her in office longer than the law allows for interim appointments.
Habba stepped down in December after the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Brann, and she became an adviser to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Instead of heeding Brann’s initial ruling and finding a U.S. attorney candidate who could win confirmation from the U.S. Senate as the law requires, the Trump administration unilaterally replaced Habba with the triumvirate that Brann on Monday ruled was illegally appointed: senior counsel Philip Lamparello, executive assistant U.S. attorney Ari Fontecchio, and special attorney Jordan Fox.
The judge cited federal law in both his decisions, but of course the Trump administration is characterizing the latest ruling as mere whining from a liberal judge.
“The judges want nothing to do with any strong Republican voice to take over the Department of Justice,” Habba told Newsmax on Monday.
I don’t think Habba knows or cares all that much about facts — in this same interview, she confused civil rights icon Jesse Jackson with baseball great Reggie Jackson — but Brann is a lifelong Republican and NRA member. He’s not a liberal throwing a temper tantrum about Trump; he’s a serious jurist hoping to convince the president to follow the law. For the sake of our U.S. Attorney’s Office, which hears more than 1,000 cases a year involving terrorism, drugs, weapons, gang activity, and more, let’s hope the White House listens this time.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
