Alina Habba is heaping more pressure on Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to revoke the chamber’s blue slip tradition, which New Jersey’s two Democratic senators wielded to stop her from getting a floor vote for the post of U.S. attorney in the state.
Trump had nominated Habba, whom he tapped on an interim basis in March, for the full-time appointment. But Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim used blue slips — which empower home-state senators to block U.S. attorney and District Court judge nominees — to keep her from advancing in the chamber.
And Grassley, despite pressure from the White House, isn’t planning on curtailing that power anytime soon.
Meanwhile, Tillis, also a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said he’d serve as a check against anyone opposed by a home-state senator even if Grassley rescinded the procedure.
“This tradition that Senator Grassley is upholding effectively prevents anybody in a blue state from going through into Senate to then be voted on,” Habba said on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.” “Senator Booker and Senator Kim had absolutely every right to vote no for me for the U.S. Attorney position. But I had the right as the nominee to get if front of Senate and to be voted on, to be vetted. I never even got there.”
But there remains little appetite in the GOP-led Senate to scrap the tradition, which Republicans have used in the past to influence judicial appointments at home with Democrats in the White House.
Habba’s saga this year has been complicated. She was appointed acting U.S. attorney for the state, but, once the 120-day interim period expired, a panel of District Court judges declined to retain her, instead appointing Desiree Leigh Grace, her first assistant, to the interim position. Complaining about “rogue” judges, Attorney General Pam Bondi then fired Grace and Trump — who had previously nominated Habba to the post full-time — instead restored Habba’s interim status, a maneuver that was immediately challenged as invalid.
The result: Habba is currently holding her attorney post “not lawfully,” U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said last week, leaving open the possibility that any of the actions she has taken on the job since July 1 “may be declared void.” Shortly after that ruling, a District Court judge postponed the sentencing of a CEO prosecuted by Habba’s office due to her involvement.
“The truth is it has nothing to do with the work that we’re doing, it has nothing to do with the crime that we’re stopping,” she told Bartiromo. “It has to do with trying to prevent President Trump from continuing his agenda, and it has to stop. So I would say to Senator Tillis and Senator Grassley, you are becoming part of the issue. You are becoming part of the antithesis of what we fought for four years.”
