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A federal judge disqualified three Justice Department officials from overseeing federal prosecutions in New Jersey, delivering another ruling in a dispute over how the Trump administration selects U.S. attorneys. U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said the appointments were tied to what he described as an illegal effort to expand presidential power beyond what the Constitution allows.
Brann’s decision, described as scathing and spanning 130 pages, addressed a question at the center of the broader conflict between the judiciary and the Trump administration: whether U.S. attorney leadership can be put in place without Senate confirmation. U.S. law generally requires Senate confirmation for U.S. attorneys to remain in the jobs, while limiting how long someone can serve without that confirmation.
The case traces to Brann’s earlier ruling, when he barred President Donald Trump’s first choice for U.S. attorney in New Jersey, former personal attorney Alina Habba, from the role. Brann said Habba had stayed too long without Senate confirmation, and on March 9 he extended that reasoning to a new arrangement put in place after the earlier ruling.
On Monday, Brann struck down Attorney General Pam Bondi’s decision to replace Habba indefinitely with three Justice Department officials—Philip Lamparello, Jordan Fox and Ari Fontecchio—who would share authority for the office. Brann said naming the three officials to a role that had been held on an interim basis violated the Appointments Clause, because the Constitution requires Senate confirmation for those appointments.
Brann also wrote that the dispute reflected more than a personnel disagreement. He said the Trump administration had “chafed at the limits on their power set forth by law and the Constitution,” and he described the administration as repeatedly trying to bypass those limits.
In one passage, Brann wrote: “It is plain that President Trump and his top aides have chafed at the limits on their power set forth by law and the Constitution. To avoid these roadblocks, this administration frequently purports to have discovered enormous grants of executive power hidden in the vagaries and silences of the code,” according to the ruling. He also wrote: “I am not fooled by the Government’s superficial arguments,” and at another point criticized the administration for focusing on “who is running” the federal prosecutor’s office rather than “whether it is running at all.”
In a separate part of the ruling, Brann argued that the government had other legal options to resolve the leadership controversy. He said there were “at least three undisputedly legal methods” for the Trump administration to fill the New Jersey post and end the conflict, and he questioned why the fate of criminal prosecutions in the district depended on what he described as an “unprecedented and byzantine leadership structure.”
The opinion also drew on the pattern of courts stepping in when defendants or officials challenge the legality of U.S. attorney appointments. Judges, according to the report, have ruled in separate cases that prosecutors installed as top federal attorneys for Nevada, Los Angeles and northern New York were unlawfully serving, and that in those instances judicial remedies have involved dismissals and other steps to address improper appointment structures.
Brann’s decision cited that courts have used their power under the law to appoint U.S. attorneys to oversee offices until a president’s pick receives Senate confirmation. The report also said the Justice Department has responded in some cases by firing judicial appointees as the litigation proceeds.
Habba, who remained with the Justice Department as a senior adviser after being barred from the U.S. attorney role, responded to the ruling on social media. She called Brann’s decision “ridiculous,” and wrote that, in her view, “Judges may continue to try and stop President Trump from carrying out what the American people voted for, but we will not be deterred,” adding that what she described as the ruling’s unconstitutionality “will not succeed.”
The ruling highlighted how long the administration sought to keep unconfirmed prosecutors in place, often through “novel personnel maneuvers” that courts later found improper. Brann’s decision now adds to that sequence in New Jersey, disqualifying the three Justice Department officials Bondi had tapped to share authority for the federal prosecutor’s office.
As the legal fight continues, the immediate question for federal prosecutions in New Jersey remains who will lead the district’s U.S. attorney’s office in a way that courts say satisfies the Constitution—particularly the requirement that U.S. attorneys receive Senate confirmation to serve beyond limited periods.