Alina Habba interview: Trump's favourite prosecutor is ditching her fiery Fox persona

Telegraph

20 hours ago

When Donald Trump appointed his former spokeswoman and personal lawyer to be New Jersey's top federal prosecutor, few pundits expected Alina Habba to stay in the role for long.
Her fiery media appearances, close loyalty to Mr Trump and lack of experience as a prosecutor made her ill-suited to the role of US attorney, ran the conventional wisdom.
What they failed to recognise was her win-at-all-costs approach.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump moved to make her position permanent, setting Ms Habba on a collision course with Senate Democrats who have already said they will try to block her.
In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph on the day of her nomination, Ms Habba said she has deliberately quietened her social media feeds and moved away from outspoken Fox News appearances.
'I have intentionally taken a step away from TV. I have intentionally taken a step away from the press,' she said. 'The things that I do post are strictly legal... cases that we are charging.'
She is also prepared to answer any questions about her record.
'I'm happy to answer them, because nobody asks them, right?' she said. 'They spin about me, but nobody ever asks me directly.'
Her opponents have receipts, clips from dozens and dozens of controversial TV appearances.
Last year, she launched an unusual attack on Letitia James, the New York attorney general who prosecuted Mr Trump for civil fraud. She said the Democratic prosecutor was so comfortable in court that she even took off her shoes.
At other times she has talked up Mr Trump's chances of an unconstitutional third term, or shrugged off legal challenges to his policies setting out a controversial concept of the law: 'It's what the White House counsel says and what our attorney general of the United States says.'
She also attracted controversy after suggesting veterans who had been fired by Elon Musk's Department for Government Efficiency (Doge) were 'not fit' to 'have a job at the moment'.
It has won her admirers among Trump voters and in the tight-knit team around the president, but Democrats will be sure to use her words against her when it comes to her confirmation hearing.
That was her old job, she says now, when she was employed to defend the president.
Mr Trump appointed the 41-year-old as New Jersey's interim US attorney in March.
She wasted no time in revamping her personal office, putting in her own cream-coloured sofas and framed newspaper cuttings, making it clear she planned to be there long term.
And now she has a strategy for taking on the doubters, which she laid out in the course of the interview.
After three months in the job she has a track record to defend. She has wins in the form of major drug investigations as well as the fallout from protests at an immigration detention facility, where Ras Baraka, Newark's Democratic mayor, and Rep LaMonica McIver, were arrested.
Her office later dropped the criminal trespassing charges against Mr Baraka but is prosecuting Ms LaMonica for alleged assault.
The result is that New Jersey's two Democratic senators, who have extra sway in the confirmation process, have said they won't back Ms Habba for the full term.
She insisted that the detention centre case had been mischaracterised.
'There were also several people that we didn't charge that day, and I dismissed one of those cases,' she said. 'Not because anyone told me to, because I chose not to pursue that. So when people tell me that, I frankly take offence to it.'
Yet her presence in Trump world and her once frequent appearances on Fox News make her a polarising figure.
Ms Habba was born and raised in New Jersey. She first made contact with the president when she joined his Bedminster club, close to her home and legal practice.
She quickly became a key figure in his legal team as he fought defamation lawsuits brought by Celebrity Apprentice contestant Summer Zervoce, and the journalist E Jean Carroll, as well as civil fraud allegations made by New York's attorney general.
A Washington Post cutting from 2021 hangs on the wall. Its headline reads 'To sue the New York Times and his niece, Trump turned to a low-profile attorney from New Jersey,' and it has been signed with the president's jagged autograph.
'My first hit piece,' she says, then adds: 'Oh wait. 2021? No, not my first.'
She was ever present when Mr Trump was convicted of business fraud in a New York court, and became his legal spokeswoman during the campaign last year.
After the election she was appointed counsellor to the president – the role filled by Kellyanne Conway in Trump 1.0 – giving her the ear of the president and a second-floor West Wing office beside his legal team.
'As counsellor to the president, it's a great job, because you can do whatever you want to sink your teeth into,' she said, 'but at the same time, I think here I have a focus that is much more suited for me.'
After two months in the Washington swamp she moved back home to New Jersey.
Rumours, stoked by Democrats, hinted that she would never get beyond the 120 days of an 'interim' US attorney and that Mr Trump would appoint someone else for a full term.
That did not stop Ms Habba preparing for a longer stint. One of the first things she did was order the official portraits of the president and JD Vance, his vice-president, to hang in the hallway, and bringing in her own soft furnishings for her personal office.
Her social media feed, once punchy and partisan, went quiet.
'You look at how much TV I used to do, and now, I won't go on unless there's something I really feel like has to be addressed,' she said.
She is under the weather with a cold but still manages a busy line in confessional chat. And she has just come from a succession of press conferences.
In the first she announced a major drugs bust, charging 24 members or associates of the 'Sex, Money, Murder' street gang, affiliated with the notorious East Coast criminal Bloods gang for their alleged roles in a fentanyl, heroin and crack cocaine trafficking ring.
In the second, she announced the first charges stemming from her new 'fentanyl precursor inception strike force'.
Making the streets safer is her only priority, she says.
'New Jersey has a little bit of an opportunity that I can really seize, which is that we are linked to so many major cities in this country, Philadelphia, for the south of New Jersey, New York City, right?' she says. 'We have Newark Airport, we have the tunnels, we have bridges, we have ports.'
The corner office illustrates her point. The Manhattan skyline is visible to the west, and a steady stream of airliners can be seen landing at Newark Liberty International airport.
'You can be incredibly effective for the surrounding major cities as well as your state,' she says.
Her departure from the White House was reported in some circles as a demotion, an exiling of an ambitious figure with sharp elbows.
But in her telling – backed by insiders who say she remains tight with the president – it was an offer not an order, a chance to go back to her first career and be closer to her family who had stayed in New Jersey.
'I had the ability to say I wanted to stay so no, I chose to do this,' she says. 'And honestly, at the time, I didn't realise how much I was going to love it, and I really do.'
Rather than saying goodbye to Chloe, nine, Luke, 11, and Parker, 18, on a Monday morning and flying to Washington for the week, she now drives the 45 minutes from home to the office each day.
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Whether or not she will stay in the job is now up to the Senate, where she needs a simple majority to be confirmed to the role.
Democrats have a string of questions about whether she is politicising the office, starting with an interview in March.
'We could turn New Jersey red. I really do believe that,' Ms Habba told a conservative podcaster. 'Hopefully while I'm there, I can help that cause.'
She points out that the interview was conducted before she was sworn in as interim US attorney, when she was still in the role of counsellor to the president.
And she is ready to be asked about her lack of experience as a prosecutor, explaining that previous office holders have had similar backgrounds to hers and that her office is packed with lawyers with years spent prosecuting cases.
'It's a silly talking point, to be honest with you,' she says. 'I think that as long as you're surrounded by great people that will tell you exactly what the laws are, give you all the facts then all you have to do is apply law to fact and take out anything about politics.'
None of that might count, however, in the face of opposition from her two home state senators. 'In her short tenure as an interim US Attorney, she has degraded the office and pursued frivolous and politically motivated prosecutions,' Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim said.
Senate custom suggests that her nomination will not move forward if they oppose it, although there are other ways.
Either way, Ms Habba says she would relish the chance to defend her record and set out her case in front of senators.
'I'll tell you one thing, nobody's ever interviewed me and been like, Oh, she's so fake,' she says. 'For better or worse, you asked me about going in front of the Senate... I will be genuinely me. I truly do not have the energy or care to be fake.'