If this happens, it could not happen to a more deserving smug, self righteous, MAGA twit than Alina Habba, also known as the interim United States attorney for the State of New Jersey. (Relocated there from her previous post as White House counsel and her post before that, of untrained trial attorney for Donald Trump, great at losing cases and doing photo ops.) In an ironic spin, Habba is the interim top cop for the same state that has been quietly conducting an ethics investigation of the lawyer for the past year and a half.
NOTUS obtained documents detailing the investigation, [which puts her license to practice at risk] which since January 2024 has been probing what happened when a young waitress at Trump’s Bedminster golf club tried to sue over sexual harassment by her manager.
Nancy Erika Smith, who represents the former Bedminster employee and filed the ethics complaint, told NOTUS she decided to come forward publicly about the investigation after patiently waiting for months without a resolution.
“I released it because I think it’s important that people know,” she said.
The New Jersey Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Ethics has been looking into allegations that Habba mistreated the employee — becoming her lawyer only to convince her to accept a hush money deal for a paltry sum, all to ingratiate herself with Trump.
The complaint closely adheres to allegations already made in state court — with a complaint backed by dozens of text messages — that Habba befriended Alice Bianco in the summer of 2021 when the 21-year-old waitress had just found an employment lawyer to file a sexual harassment lawsuit. Text messages show that Habba privately disparaged the other lawyer and offered herself up instead, drafting a $15,000 nondisclosure agreement.
Just weeks later, documents show, Habba officially became Trump’s lawyer in his lawsuit against “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos, with her small firm in the New Jersey suburbs replacing one of the top litigation firms in the country, Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP.
When Bianco later discovered she owed taxes on the $15,000 she had received, Habba gave her the cold shoulder.
And bear in mind $15,000, let alone the taxes on same, is total chump change to these people. They have bar bills which are larger than what we’re talking about. Fifteen grand wouldn’t even buy half of one of Melania’s handbags, are you kidding?
“I can’t technically give u legal advice,” Habba texted back, in a message attached to the lawsuit. “That’s the problem.”
New Jersey outlaws such nondisclosure agreements, and Bianco later hired another attorney who sued Trump’s golf club and scored an $82,500 settlement that left Habba out — and still exposed her to further legal liability. Last year, NOTUS broke the news that Habba quietly settled the matter with Bianco.
Now here is another ironic twist in all this: Trump nominated Habba to fill the post permanently on Tuesday. That means that she would require Senate approval. Is the Senate going to rubber stamp this, too, like they did the disastrous BBB? And this is not Habba’s only ethics complaint. She has also been reported for the arrest of Newark Mayor Res Baraka when he visited a federal immigration detention center.
That led New Jersey senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim to issue a joint statement that said, with respect to Habba’s tenure “as an interim U.S. Attorney, she has degraded the office and pursued frivolous and politically motivated prosecutions.” Booker and Kim would traditionally hold the power to approve or disapprove a president’s picks for their state’s U.S. attorney, under what’s called the “blue slip” process. That’s in a normal world and we don’t live there anymore.
That said, I don’t think that Habba getting approved for the U.S. Attorney’s office on a permanent basis is going to be a smooth ride, let’s just say that much. Nothing like a little fireworks this time of year, eh what?
Her main qualifications were tits and ass. That led to problems? Imagine that.