President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Alina Habba, is going all in on the administration’s newly open Attorney General position.
Pam Bondi was fired on Thursday after a tumultuous year at the helm of the DOJ, where she flubbed the release of the Epstein files and made little progress in prosecuting Trump’s enemies, both of which were top Trump campaign promises.
With Bondi’s seat at the DOJ still warm, the 42-year-old Habba is now launching a very public bid to replace her.
“Always an honor,” she wrote on Friday in a boot-licking post, along with a photo of her, Trump, and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office. It is unclear when the photo was taken.
Habba has known Trump since 2021, when he hired her from a small New Jersey law firm to help represent him in multiple cases, including his hush-money conviction in New York. Most recently, she divorced her millionaire husband, Gregg Reuben, in February and purchased a home in Florida near Mar-a-Lago, the Daily Mail revealed.
Habba attended law school at Widener University Commonwealth Law School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which U.S. News and World Report ranks 175th in the country. Graduating from an elite law school apparently is not required to become attorney general under Trump, as Bondi attended the 99th-ranked American law school, Stetson University, in her native Florida.
An emotional Bondi, 60, reportedly pleaded with Trump for more time to ensure a “graceful exit,” but she ultimately became the second high-profile firing of MAGA 2.0, following DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s axing last month.
Just as Bondi’s ouster was announced, MS NOW’s White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López was poring over potential replacements. She said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and Habba are in the running to replace her permanently.
Additionally, top D.C. prosecutor Jeanine Pirro was allegedly badmouthing Bondi behind her back in an effort to swoop into the vacated role, reports New York magazine. Trump did not deny he is considering Pirro for the role, telling New York she and Habba are both “great people.”
“Jeanine Pirro’s fantastic, but they’re both great people,” Trump added. Pirro, for her part, denies she wants to be considered.
Trump has installed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, another former personal defense lawyer of his, as acting head of the DOJ.
Habba spent the first year of MAGA 2.0 serving as the acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, but the chief U.S. district judge, Matthew W. Brann, ruled in December that she had been unlawfully serving past her 120-day term without Senate confirmation.
A trio of judges on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled unanimously to uphold the lower court decision that she was disqualified from the job.
Habba previously defended Trump during his fraud case and worked as a legal spokesperson for his campaign.
