The judge appointed by former President Obama who ruled this week that Trump pick Alina Habba lacks the authority to serve as the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey is a longtime Republican, with membership in the conservative Federalist Society and the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Habba and Attorney General Pam Bondi both have ripped U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann of taking a “rogue” or “activist” position after he ruled Thursday that Habba was unlawfully serving as the Garden State’s federal prosecutor through a “novel series of legal and personnel moves.”
“Faced with the question of whether Ms. Habba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not,” Brann wrote.
Bondi has vowed to challenge the decision.
“I am the pick of the president,” Habba said on Fox News’s “Hannity” on Thursday night. “I am the pick of Pam Bondi, our attorney general, and I will serve this country like I have for the last several years, in any capacity.”
“We will not fall to rogue judges. We will not fall to people trying to be political when they should just be doing their job: respecting the president,” she added.
Brann was nominated to the court by Obama in 2012 but was backed by Republicans.
Then-Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) recommended Brann in 2012 to Obama for the Pennsylvania-based lifetime district judgeship. Toomey was a fiscally conservative Republican, though he is also one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict President Trump in his second impeachment trial.
Brann was approved by the Senate, which had a slim Democratic majority at the time, without objection.
But Democrats during his confirmation hearing did raise questions about Brann’s deep roots in the GOP.
“You are a very active Republican — probably the most Republican judicial
nominee from the Obama White House, I think,” then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) remarked during a Judiciary Committee hearing while his nomination was up for review.
Brann detailed his background in a standard questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee before the panel advanced his 2012 confirmation.
A New York native, Brann earned his law degree from Pennsylvania State University’s law school in 1990, after earning his undergraduate degree at Notre Dame. He clerked for Judge John Hammun, an appointee of former President Nixon, and served on the Pennsylvania GOP’s judicial evaluation panels multiple years.
He also noted in the disclosure that he had been the chairman of the Northeast Caucus of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania for several years and spoken at multiple GOP advocacy events in the state. Additionally, he disclosed his involvement with the Federalist Society and membership in the NRA.
“I became involved and interested in Republican politics when I came out of law school, and I was interested even then, even in college,” Brann told senators during his 2012 confirmation hearing. “And my views are basically conservative views.”
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