Noted attorney Alan Dershowitz said Tuesday on his podcast that the ouster of interim United States Attorney Alina Habba of the District of New Jersey by the district’s judges was “as unconstitutional as anything.”
A panel of federal district judges in the District of New Jersey, most of whom were appointed by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, removed Habba Monday, following a demand by Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader. Dershowitz said Habba’s removal and replacement by a selection made by the judges exceeded their power during an episode of his podcast, “The Dershow.”
“President Trump nominated a lawyer, Alina Habba, who I know was one of his lawyers, to be US attorney for New Jersey. That’s very common for a president to appoint somebody he knows, somebody who’s worked with him,” Dershowitz said at the start of the episode. “Ronald Reagan appointed his own personal lawyer to be the attorney general of the United States. John Kennedy appointed his brother.”
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“So Alina Habba gets appointed interim [U.S. Attorney] and the judges refused to renew the appointment and instead appointed somebody who was not nominated by the president,” Dershowitz continued. “Let me be very clear that is as unconstitutional as anything could possibly be. The framers of the Constitution limited the role of judges to cases and controversies. Even Justice Ginsburg said the Constitution doesn’t give judges a roving commission to do justice.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi almost immediately removed Desiree Leigh Grace, who was the pick of the judges to take over for Habba. Dershowitz acknowledged Congress passed a law allowing for the procedure, but still said that if the Trump administration challenged the removal, it had a very good chance to succeed.
“Yes, there is a statute that gives the judges the power in unusual cases to select the US attorney. That’s unconstitutional. It’s an unconstitutional action by Congress,” Dershowitz said. “You cannot give judges more power than the Constitution gives them. So if this is challenged, don’t know if the Trump administration will challenge it, it will lose nine to nothing in the Supreme Court. There isn’t a single justice who will find any justification for allowing judges to decide who should be appointed.”
Habba came under fire from Democrats after Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey was charged with assaulting an ICE agent after a May incident at an ICE facility in Newark.
“It’s unconstitutional. It exceeds the power of judges under the Constitution,” Dershowitz concluded.
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Author: Harold Hutchison
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