Federal Judge Strikes Down Trump's Illegal New Jersey Prosecutor Appointments

A federal judge has disqualified the three Justice Department officials jointly leading the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey, ruling in a blistering 130-page opinion that their appointments violated the Constitution's Appointments Clause and amounted to an illegal power grab by the Trump administration.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann found that the Justice Department's co-leadership arrangement, which divided the office among senior counsel Philip Lamparello, executive assistant U.S. attorney Ari Fontecchio, and special attorney Jordan Fox, was an unlawful end-run around Senate confirmation requirements. "The Government assembles a convoluted patchwork of statutory cross-references to craft a leadership structure that it contends can do anything a United States Attorney can, without being a United States Attorney," Brann wrote.

The ruling is the latest chapter in an extended legal battle over the Trump administration's management of federal prosecutor offices, where U.S. law normally requires Senate confirmation and only permits temporary service in the role for limited periods. Brann, a Pennsylvania judge first assigned to oversee the New Jersey dispute last summer, stayed his own ruling pending appeal to the Third Circuit, meaning the three officials remain in place for now.

The dispute traces back to Alina Habba, Trump's former personal attorney and his first choice for New Jersey's top federal prosecutor post. Brann disqualified Habba last August, and an appeals court upheld that ruling, prompting her resignation in December. The Justice Department responded by splitting the office's leadership among the three officials, a workaround Brann has now found equally unlawful.

In a sharp rebuke of the administration's broader legal strategy, Brann wrote: "One year into this administration, 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."

His formal constitutional conclusion was direct: "I conclude that the current leadership structure for the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey exceeds the Attorney General's statutory authority to appoint inferior officers and delegate them powers and therefore constitutes a unilateral appointment in violation of the Appointments Clause."

Brann noted the administration had "at least three undisputedly legal methods" available to fill the New Jersey post, suggesting the legal conflict is a product of choice rather than necessity.

Habba, now an adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi, attacked the ruling on social media. "Judges may continue to try and stop President Trump from carrying out what the American people voted for, but we will not be deterred," she wrote on X. "The unconstitutionality of this complete overreach into the Executive Branch, time and time again, will not succeed." The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The ruling fits a national pattern. In Virginia, a judge found in November that acting U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan's appointment was unlawful, and the indictments she brought against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey were subsequently dismissed. In other districts, judges have exercised their statutory authority to appoint interim U.S. attorneys directly, only to have the Justice Department immediately fire those appointees.

Whether the Trump administration will appeal Brann's latest decision remains unclear. What is clear is that the Justice Department has yet to identify a legally durable path to staffing the New Jersey office, and the Third Circuit will soon be asked to determine whether Brann's constitutional reading stands.