Bulwark Takes - Breaking: Trump Taps Parking Garage Lawyer & Influencer As US Attorney

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Sam Stein and Tim Miller talk Donald Trump's announcement that his former attorney and councilor Alina Habba will be appointed US Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

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But right as we sat down to do it, we have a breaking news item that we got to work through with you guys. Here it is from Donald Trump's bleat. He announces this. It is with great pleasure that I am announcing Alina Haba Esquire, who is currently serving as counselor to the president that has represented me for a long time will be interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, her home state, effective immediately. As you know, I've stood by President Trump, his family,

the organization, and many other clients in that state where I've been born and raised, and I'm raising my babies now. But there is corruption, there is injustice, and there is a heavy amount of crime right in Cory Booker's backyard and right under Governor Murphy, and that will stop. This is insane. Can you imagine being a lawyer at the District of New Jersey's prosecutor's office? This person is about to be your boss. We're going to go through her resume for this job in a second. But, Sam, what do you make of Alina?

I'm still reading the bleep. And it says, additionally, John Giordano, who has done a terrific job as interim U.S. attorney in New Jersey, will now be nominated as the new ambassador to Namibia. That was a little curveball at the end there congratulations john um alina let's start with that um i i'm like i'm kind of speechless um she is best known as his spokesperson she said she was counsel uh these things, but let's be real. Her job was to go in front of the cameras and talk. She was the TV lawyer.

She was the TV lawyer. I mean, he was the TV businessman. Right. And I just want to, like, when she was working as Trump's attorney, people were, like, kind of shocked that he would hire her and wondering why he hired her because.

Were people wondering why? Well, I think everybody had a pretty good sense for why. I mean, she looks to part. Yes, you can say that. You can say that. She was a member, I guess, of the Trump National Golf Club at Bedminster, which was an eight minute drive from her law firm. So, you know he went and got the best and the brightest from a 10 mile radius and um look she's not she's not

the most experienced attorney but this is the type of stuff that she's going to bring to the uh he was attorney's office in new jersey which is mind you a very important office tons of cases get in there financial cases terrorism cases serious stuff mob cases uh like real real stuff uh okay i'm just really quick as an aside let's just do this let's sit on this for a second being u.s attorney is an extremely real and important job this is not like you are you are in charge of deter of making judgments about who to prosecute who not to prosecute you have the power of the the, of the, of the government behind you. You can create a lot of problems in people's lives. It is critical that you are very serious about the way that cases are

presented, you know, because I real criminals could get left on the streets. If you, if you foul it up, I mean, like, this is not, you know, this is not the Department of Commerce. I'm going to go through some of her illegal accomplishments prior to this moment, prior to her representation of Trump, because that's really what matters here. Again, I'm judging off of Wikipedia, so forgive me, but we're doing this on short turnaround. But this is what they have here. She had three cases as lead counsel during her time

practicing law in New Jersey. She was also licensed in New York and Connecticut. Three cases. Three cases. One, she also held the position of general counsel for her second husband's parking garage company. Okay, so she was the general counsel for the parking garage company yeah all right so she represented clients in various because including a man who sued a nursing home in new jersey important a student seeking a refund for college tuition from the after the university of bridgeport moved classes to an online format not that big state but that's kind of like a judge

judy quote like level yeah it's like i got this client he wants some you know course accreditation Not that big state. That's kind of like a Judge Judy level of case. Yeah, it's like, I got this client. He wants some course of credation. She represented Siggy Flicker, former member of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, who alleged that Facebook had disabled her account for wishing Melania Trump a happy birthday. Haber wrote a letter to Facebook, which Facebook appeared to ignore. Dear God. book appeared to ignore dear god and then she represented someone who was a vitamin supplement entrepreneur in a federal case where she filed a lawsuit against a portuguese journalist for revealing his close connections to the far-right chega party in portugal that's it that's what we

got and then she represented trump um it was not new jersey it was a sdny that okay in this case but um i mean that is uh that's not really a very extensive resume for this job. It's not the traditional resume. I need this to say, usually you would have people that have prosecutorial experience as the U.S. attorney. I mean, there are some exceptions to this, but usually you would want somebody that knows how to prosecute a case. If you're a high-level defense attorney who has been in a lot of criminal cases, maybe that is...

This is a fucking parking garage lawyer. I mean, literally, this is like a cereal box level law degree. Again, I want to go back to your initial point. This is serious. These are serious offices, and they've already kind of desecrated one of these offices, the district attorney's office in D.C., by hiring Eagle Ed Martin, who is out there basically saying, I'm Trump's lawyer and I'll do what Trump wants. I mean, this is what she's going to do. I mean, this is a serious matter.

Because she literally is Trump's lawyer. She's not going there to uphold the independence of the office of the Attorney General of New Jersey. She's going there to do cases that can help Trump and go after people that Trump opposes. This is the weaponization of very serious offices for the purposes of benefiting one client, not the United States, the President of the United States. And it's scary stuff, honestly. This is the craziest part. Like these are supposed to be the law and order people, right? Like to put Ed Martin in, in charge of DC, when the DC attorney is in charge of all of

the crime that happens in DC. I thought that, but instead he's like sending letters to Georgetown university because they did DEI and stuff is going to fall through the cracks. I just pulled this up. Here's the New Jersey district attorney's office, like some recent press releases they've put out about what they're doing. There's an Essex County man that was doing firearms trafficking and narcotics offenses. New Jersey pain clinic was doing health care fraud and had to agree to criminal and civil penalties. Illegally importing harmful greenhouse gases into the U.s an hvac company obviously we're

not going to be prosecuting that anymore with this administration uh bank fraud and conspiracy to rob u.s post office employees uh hundreds of kilograms of cocaine into the united states illegally gun possession like this office prosecutes real criminals that do real harm to the country. Putting a fucking parking garage lawyer in charge of that with no experience doing this is preposterous. And it is anti-law and order, and it's dangerous. Yeah, and what's going to happen is she's going to reorient the entire office. Anyone who she determines. Tesla vandals watch out. Yeah,

pretty much. I mean, that's a line, but I wouldn't be, I know I'm serious. It's going to be all Tesla vandals and going after people who she suspects are harboring undocumented immigrants, election fraud,

maybe an election. And we're going to end up seeing a bunch of kind of phony ish investigations launched that have political motivations the serious attorneys at the front lines probably get reassigned to lower level cases and she's just going to do what ed martin has done which is take on the idea that you're there to help donald trump And so, you know, I don't even know what to say at this juncture because the entire legal system is being upended. And it's only been a matter of months, but the entire legal system has been upended by this distortion

and perversion of what justice should be. Yeah. So you've been on the brain drain element of this, but just one last thought on this for me, just because I have two tangible examples. I want to anonymize these people. But in one case, somebody really close to me was supposed to get a job in a US attorney's office, not New Jersey. But they were qualified, they had the experience, serious, the type of person that you would want, you know, working for the government. But when they had the transition, they're just like, no, we're like, we're canceling out all the people that we're bringing in. You know, we want to bring in people who are, you know, aligned for Mr. Trump. Right. So, OK, So that's one example. Another example is somebody who is in one of these jobs in a district attorney's office who they have not announced who the new attorney will

be for that district yet. But they're really worried about this. So like, I have to look for another job because they're going to reorient me to what you just said. Like I'm going to be doing all entirely undocumented immigrant crimes. Like the type of person that's doing also serious high level, like white collar and drug crimes. Like, I don't know that I want to, you know, do spend my whole life like prosecuting the random, you know, person that overstayed their visa. And so I just like there will be like real ramifications on that side of this too. No, totally couldn't agree more. If you're in the office, we have a tips line.

We do have a tip line to bulwark.com slash tips. If you're in the New Jersey district attorney's office. All right. We can leave it there.