US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he is appointing his former lawyer Alina Haba, who was previously sanctioned for filing a lawsuit without merit, to temporarily act as US attorney for the District of New Jersey, Reuters reported.
Haba has represented Trump in various civil lawsuits, including the trial in which a jury found Trump liable for defamation of author E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room.
She is also representing Trump in a civil fraud lawsuit in New York brought by state Attorney General Letitia James over the business practices of his real estate company.
The judge in the case found him liable and ordered him to pay $454 million. Trump appealed the decision.
"There is corruption. There is injustice. There is serious crime right in Cory Booker's backyard and Governor Murphy's backyard," Haba told reporters Monday, referring to Democratic U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy after she was appointed.
Haba added that she looked forward to "prosecuting the people we need to prosecute - not the people who are falsely accused," but declined to elaborate.
In 2023, a federal judge in Florida sanctioned Trump and Haba and ordered them to pay $1 million for filing a frivolous lawsuit alleging that Hillary Clinton and others conspired to damage Trump's reputation in the investigation into the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump and Haba are appealing the decision.
Haba is the latest in a string of former Trump lawyers to be appointed to key positions at the Justice Department, Reuters notes. Todd Blanche, Emile Beauvais and Kendra Wharton, three of his defense attorneys, currently hold senior positions in the prosecutor's office.