Congress
Alina Habba targeted Democrats when she became New Jersey’s top prosecutor. Now she’s following through.
From the moment she was named New Jersey’s interim U.S. Attorney, Alina Habba made it clear she would use the office as a political bludgeon.
Just before her March swearing-in, Habba talked to a far-right activist about turning “New Jersey red,” announced investigations into its Democratic governor and attorney general over immigration, called out Sen. Cory Booker’s hometown of Newark for crime and said “I’m looking at you, Paterson” over the city’s immigration policies.
Habba, who had no prosecutorial experience but represented President Donald Trump in three civil trials in recent years, found an opening this month to make her mark, when three Democratic House members and a progressive mayor running for governor showed up to inspect a migrant detention center in Newark.
Habba initially charged Newark Mayor Ras Baraka with trespass despite his compliance with federal agents’ demands to leave the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility’s fenced-in area. She dropped the misdemeanor charge this week but escalated the May 9 dispute by charging Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver with felony assault on law enforcement in the scuffle that ensued while they arrested Baraka.
Habba’s decision drew plaudits on the right and protests from Democrats that she had crossed a “red line,” with New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone going as far as to liken her behavior to a “fascist regime.”
It wouldn’t be the first time New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney’s Office has been tainted by politics. Habba’s predecessor Phil Sellinger testified in the corruption trial of Democratic former Sen. Bob Menendez, who had wanted Sellinger to go easy in a bank fraud case against a developer friend, Fred Daibes, who would later become his codefendant. Former Gov. Chris Christie, who also had no prosecutorial experience when he became U.S. attorney, built his political career as an anti-corruption crusader in the office, often targeting Democrats.
“Chris Christie used that office brilliantly for his own political purposes, but he didn’t come at it with a meat cleaver the way she’s approaching it,” said Gerry Krovatin, a prominent New Jersey defense lawyer and Democrat who has often represented clients prosecuted by the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office.
Few expect Habba to remain in the job once her 120-day interim appointment expires. She hasn’t been formally nominated, and even if she is, New Jersey’s Democratic senators don’t look inclined to allow the nomination to proceed. Many in New Jersey’s legal community doubt that the state’s district court judges, who can appoint a U.S. attorney if the interim appointment expires, would vote to keep Habba in the role. A spokesperson for the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Habba has been floated as a potential challenger to Booker in 2026, and as a potential Fox News host. For now, New Jersey Democrats are wondering how much damage she can do in her four months on the job.
“I’m fighting with a lot of people about being scared and being afraid to speak out,” said attorney Nancy Erika Smith, a Democrat. “There’s fear out there.”
Smith played a role in Habba’s first New Jersey scandal, when she represented a 21-year-old former server at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. The server, Alice Bianco, claimed that Habba befriended her in 2021 when Bianco was planning to file a sexual harassment suit against the club, encouraged her to fire her lawyer and convinced her to sign a non-disclsoure agreement in exchange for $15,000. (The club and Habba both settled with Bianco).
Smith suggested Habba’s work on Bianco helped her cozy up to Trump, since she began representing him in a defamation case just weeks after Bianco signed the non-disclosure agreement, which is illegal in New Jersey.
“It’s red meat for the Fox News base that’s all she cares about,” Smith said. “She doesn’t care about law, she doesn’t care about ethics.”
Habba, 41, described herself at the Republican National Convention last year as a “feisty Jersey girl” and a first-generation Arab-American who is a devout Catholic. Her parents fled Iraq in the 1980s. Before college, she attended a private girls’ school in New Jersey and her LinkedIn page says she attended Lehigh University and then Widener University Commonwealth Law School in Pennsylvania. After law school, she clerked for state court Judge Eugene Codey.
Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Habba to the office in March, a month after Trump’s expected pick for U.S. attorney, state Sen. Doug Steinhardt, withdrew himself from the running because he was not certain he would win confirmation.
Just days into her tenure, New Jersey’s legal community began raising alarms. Forty-two law professors at Seton Hall and Rutgers in an open letter published in the New Jersey Law Journal on April 2 called her “fundamentally unqualified” and said her public statements “show a lack of respect for the integrity and impartiality that is at the core of the Department of Justice.”
“The judges of the District Court should exercise the power entrusted to them by statute — they should refuse to rubber stamp an unqualified interim appointee and instead appoint a qualified U.S. attorney to lead federal law enforcement in New Jersey,” the professors wrote.
Five days after taking office, Habba, outfitted in a bulletproof vest, attended a raid in Newark, personally escorting some of the defendants to law-enforcement vehicles after they had been handcuffed. The move raised eyebrows in the legal community, both because it is highly unusual for a U.S. attorney to attend an arrest and because her presence could have legal consequences.
“All in all, it’s probably better if our prosecutorial chiefs do not do that just for appearances sake,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University law school who specializes in legal ethics. He added that “as U.S. attorney, her conduct in the field may be subject to investigation or challenge by the defense lawyers, and it’s best to avoid that if possible.”
As Trump’s lawyer, Habba repeatedly drew the ire of judges before whom she appeared. In Trump’s civil fraud trial against the New York Attorney General’s office, she complained in court about “eye rolls and constant whispering” from the judge’s principal law clerk. It was one of the actions that prompted the judge, Justice Arthur Engoron, to issue a gag order preventing Trump’s attorneys from making public remarks about communications between Engoron and his staff.
Engoron eventually fined Habba and four other Trump attorneys $7,500 each for repeating legal arguments that had previously failed and had been deemed “borderline frivolous.” (The attorneys are appealing those fines along with the judgment against Trump and his adult sons.)
In Trump’s second trial against E. Jean Carroll, Habba attempted to use a slide in her closing argument that included material she hadn’t entered as evidence. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan threatened to detain her. “You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup,” he told her. “Now, sit down,” he said angrily.
U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks fined Habba and Trump nearly $1 million in sanctions for filing a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and dozens of former Justice Department and FBI officials that the judge called “completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose.”
Still, she has won praise from some lawyers who have worked with her. “Alina is an incredibly talented lawyer who has proven to be both fearless and loyal, two important characteristics to the president,” said Joe Tacopina, who represented Trump alongside Habba during the first Carroll trial.
State Sen. Joe Pennacchio, a Republican who was New Jersey co-chair of Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, said Habba “did try to temper” her actions by dropping the charges against Baraka.
“They’ve got to draw some type of line in the sand in some way,” Pennacchio said. “No one’s going to jail for this, but it’s going to be a little more of a hassle that [McIver] is going to have to defend herself and explain what she did.”
But keeping politics out of her day job appears to be somewhat of an ongoing challenge for the first-time prosecutor. In an interview with far-right activist Jack Posobiec just before she took office, Habba suggested New Jersey could swing Republican.
“We could turn New Jersey red. I really do believe that,” Habba said. “Hopefully while I’m there I can help that cause. I’m not a political person in that role, but the one thing I just want to do is make it safer.”
A partisan office could present problems for prosecutors, police and, Habba’s critics warn, the public.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, who was appointed to the post by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and who Habba said she is investigating, said in a recent interview with BLN that Habba’s office has had “no interest” in working with the state on joint law enforcement activities and warned of the risks. “We saw what happens in 9/11 when law enforcement agencies aren’t communicating,” Platkin said.
Tom Cotton made his name in Washington as an outspoken critic of a Democratic president’s deal to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Now, with a president of his own party angling toward a similarly structured agreement, the Arkansas Republican is so far using a softer voice.
Cotton, the No. 3 Senate Republican and Intelligence Committee chair, is not alone among GOP defense hawks in finding himself in an awkward position more than a decade after lambasting President Barack Obama’s Iran deal.
But the combination of his prior ferocity toward the Iranian regime and his current leadership responsibilities have put him into an especially tight spot as President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance sell their 14-point “memorandum of understanding” to skeptical Republicans.
Cotton moved toward critiquing that framework in a Fox News interview Thursday, crediting Trump for “making Iran weaker than it’s been in decades” while airing concerns that “certain aspects of this deal are a step in the wrong direction.”
“We need to make sure that we don’t squander the leverage that we’ve built” against Iran, he said.
That is a far cry from the rhetoric Cotton deployed as a freshman senator in 2015, when Obama was moving in concert with other global powers to force Iran to curb its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other economic favors.
Cotton led a brash effort to undermine the deal — most notably by organizing a public letter signed by 46 other GOP senators to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then the supreme leader of Iran, warning that “anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement” that could be nixed by a future administration.
The letter enraged the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, but it was prescient.
After he was elected in 2016, Trump withdrew from the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, setting the stage for his second-term military campaign against Iran that he is now seeking to end by trading curbs on Iran’s nuclear program for sanctions relief and other economic favors.
If that was the only jam Cotton was facing from Trump this week, it would be plenty. But the discomfiting Iran situation has been compounded by the president’s recent moves to upend Cotton’s careful negotiations aimed at extending a key surveillance program for three years.
After Trump blew up that deal by appointing a political ally to a top intelligence position, Cotton moved quickly to fast-track a permanent replacement through his committee and rekindle the surveillance deal — only to watch Trump blow things up once again.
Majority Leader John Thune, like most Senate Republicans, had nothing but praise this week for the “great job” Cotton was doing amid the tumult over the expired spy law and the director of national intelligence drama.
“He’s a really strong chair on the committee. And he had it all teed up and ready to go,” Thune said in an interview. “Now it’s just … back to the drawing board.”
But Cotton’s moves amid the back-and-forth — particularly his decision to publicly announce a hearing would move forward Wednesday for DNI nominee Jay Clayton even after Trump publicly declared he was “cancelling” it — attracted attention on the right.
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon voiced blistering criticism of Cotton, calling him “out of control” and suggesting he “should be turfed out” of his safe seat over trying to proceed with the hearing. Cotton is up for reelection and expected to win easily.
Cotton backtracked, postponing the hearing while noting that it was “regrettable” that Trump directed Clayton not to appear. The White House didn’t respond to questions about Cotton.
Thune defended Cotton, saying he was “operating within his rights and prerogatives” as chair in insisting, however briefly, that the hearing would go on.
Unlike most GOP senators, Cotton is unusually tight-lipped around the Capitol, enforcing a blanket “no comment” policy in the hallways this week as reporters tried several times to ask him about everything from the surveillance program to Clayton to Iran. His office did not respond to an interview request.
Cotton has plenty of supporters within the Senate Republican conference, where he is well-liked and won a contested race for the No. 3 leadership spot. And his quick rise through the party has generated speculation that he could one day become Senate GOP leader or run for president.
It’s not lost on Republicans that even the straight-talking 49-year-old, who was under consideration for a Trump Cabinet position, has found himself crosswise with the administration. That speaks to the larger issues the Senate GOP is facing as the president’s rash decisions complicate their carefully laid plans, they say.
“Senator Cotton is surely, surely a big fan and supporter of the president,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. But, she added, “he’s got a committee to run.”
Cotton is also hardly alone among his GOP colleagues in voicing concerns about the memorandum of understanding signed by Iran and the United States.
Though there are now more senators with MAGA-aligned “America First” foreign policy instincts than a decade ago, Cotton is part of a still-prominent pack of national security hawks that include the likes of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who recruited Cotton to run in 2014.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, went even further than Cotton in a Thursday statement that said the agreement is “completely out of step with the president’s goals.” And Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of Cotton’s committee, predicted that the agreement would only be an “intermission” in Iran’s decadeslong conflict with the United States and Israel.
“They get $300 billion — it’s not going to be for constructive or useful purposes,” Cornyn said, a reference to a “reconstruction fund” included in the agreement.
Cotton aired concerns about multiple financial concessions included in the Trump-signed memorandum, including a new allowance for Iran to conduct oil sales that he estimated would provide as much as $6 billion a month
“That money … we know is not going to build new hospitals or day cares,” Cotton said Thursday on KTHV, a Little Rock TV station. “It’s going to go to replenish their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to support terrorists.”
NEW YORK — With just five days to go until the primary election in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a stark warning to members of Congress who believe “incumbency is a substitute for action”: Watch out.
“People often ask me what I think of the state of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said to the crowd at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn as he boosted his endorsed congressional candidates. “This slate here today is our answer. The Democratic Party must change.”
The democratic socialist framed Tuesday’s election as much more than what that means for New York, though. In recounting how people also ask him about the 2028 presidential election, he put it bluntly: “It starts now. It starts on Tuesday.”
“For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. And frankly, it will lose in South Carolina and New Hampshire. It will fall short of 270 electoral votes, because the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”
Mamdani, joined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, urged his supporters to show up for his endorsed candidates “the way you showed up for me.” They include former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s challenging two-term Rep. Dan Goldman; state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who’s vying for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat; and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, who’s trying to unseat five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Mamdani’s endorsed slate of legislative candidates were at the rally, too.
The rally featured standard stump speeches from the candidates, highlighting the need to support working class New Yorkers and immigrants. Speakers called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that has loomed over many of these primaries — despite no evident spending from its independent expenditure arm. Sanders also emphasized his call to ban super PACs, which have reshaped primaries across the city.
Taking place just hours after the massive ticker-tape parade celebrating the Knicks’ historic championship, there were also Knicks references galore.
“I hate to break it to you, but OG Anunoby is not here to save the day,” said Mamdani, who was wearing a Knicks jersey under his suit. “The only hands we can count on are ours.”
Sanders, who is wildly popular in New York, previously endorsed Valdez and Lander. Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and are backed by the city chapter in their bids. Sanders had not officially endorsed Avila Chevalier prior to the rally.
“Why are progressives and socialist candidates winning elections all across this country?” Sanders asked. “The answer in my view is not complicated. The working class of America understands that our current economic system is rigged, that it is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.”
Polling has shown Lander with a lead over Goldman, and a tight race for Velázquez’s seat. Public polling is scarce in the Espaillat race, but recent internal surveys suggest Avila Chevalier is posing a real challenge to the incumbent. Mamdani endorsed her just weeks ago, much later than Lander and Valdez, but his engagement in the race has significantly elevated its profile.
“Six months ago, they told us this race was over before it started,” Avila Chevalier said at the rally. “They told us Adriano was untouchable, that he was an institution, that you don’t run against someone like him and win. That this district was his, and that we should wait our turn. And they said it with such confidence, like the outcome had already been written. Look around. Look at what we’ve built.”
Mamdani’s decision to get involved in congressional races is stress-testing how the new mayor navigates relations with powerful, well-respected party figures — many of whom he’s on the opposite side of.
Mamdani’s endorsement is expected to be a significant asset for his picks; he had dominant performances across these districts in last year’s mayoral primary. And that shine doesn’t seem to have dulled. Recent polling has shown that Mamdani has high approval ratings.
Goldman did not support Mamdani during last year’s mayoral primary or the general election, as Lander has often pointed out. Espaillat backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, but supported Mamdani in the general election. Valdez’s opponents, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and city Council Member Julie Won, both supported Mamdani in the primary.
The mayor has been active on the trail for his congressional candidates of choice in the closing stretch of the campaign. And he touted them all in an advertisement that ran during the first game of the Knicks’ finals run.
Still, Lander has tried to keep some distance. When asked at a recent press conference why he would appear in that ad with Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in 2023 — the same rally Lander said he left the DSA over — he said it was an “opportunity to show New Yorkers that politics can be a team sport.” He also clarified that he has not endorsed candidates in any other congressional primaries.
Avila Chevalier told reporters that she went to that rally to “stand against” Israel engaging in “a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.” She added that she has “condemned Hamas” and does “not believe that celebrating the loss of anybody’s life is OK.”
Kings Theatre isn’t located in any of the districts these congressional hopefuls are trying to represent — though it neighbors the seats that Lander and Valdez have their eyes on.
It’s especially far from Espaillat’s district, which includes parts of upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
While handing out campaign literature to people walking out of the subway in Hamilton Heights, Blue Light News asked Espaillat if he had thoughts about Avila Chevalier appearing at the rally.
“I’m rallying right here in my district with my constituents — not in Brooklyn,” he replied.
Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.
Retirement groups are calling on Congress to investigate Meta over a wave of social media scams targeting older Americans.
In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.
“Fraudulent Medicare ads have proliferated on Meta platforms and too many seniors are getting scammed while Meta profits,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “We are calling on Congress to investigate how these scams are allowed to spread, what Meta knew about them, and why stronger protections are not in place. Seniors should not be left vulnerable while scammers and tech companies cash in.”
The letter’s demands follow a report published last month by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit advocacy group, which alleged that Meta has profited by leaving up fraudulent ads, many of which target Medicare recipients.
“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services and for years we’ve been one of law enforcement’s strongest partners in the fight against this type of online crime — identifying criminals, disrupting their crimes and helping bring them to justice.”
Stone pointed to several examples of Meta’s efforts to combat scams on its platform, including a recent collaboration with U.S. and Thai law enforcement to disrupt online scams.
It’s not the first time Meta has faced scrutiny over the scams: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission to open an investigation into the company in November after Reuters reported that Meta in internal documents projected 10 percent of its 2024 revenue would come from fraudulent ads. And in February, a group of bipartisan lawmakers pressed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over its plans to prevent and combat fraud on its platforms.
Reps. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) also introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this year to combat predatory scam ads.
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