Alina Habba

This Sunday, House Republicans released two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, accusing him of "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law" and "breach of public trust," according to reports.

In a statement, House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) said the articles "lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' impeachment," and added that Mayorkas "has willfully and systemically refused to comply with immigration laws enacted by Congress. He has breached the public trust by knowingly making false statements to Congress and the American people, and obstructing congressional oversight of his department."

Fresh off winning an $83 million verdict against former President Donald Trump, writer E. Jean Carroll appeared on CNN for a wide-ranging interview where she commented, among other things, on the performance of Trump attorney Alina Habba.

During the interview, CNN played Carroll a clip of Habba ranting outside of the courtroom last week and claiming that Judge Lewis Kaplan had improperly blocked her from calling defense witnesses, despite the fact that Trump had already been found liable by a jury for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, and this trial was only to assess what damages Trump owed her.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, known as the so-called "Trump Whisperer," detailed some of the "colors" from the ex-president's damages trial in New York on Thursday and Friday.

Among many details, Haberman described Donald Trump "scanning" the jury and, at times, smiling at them.

Prior to deriding her courtroom skills, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman suggested Donald Trump might be thinking about dropping controversial attorney Alina Habba after taking a massive $83.3 million hit in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial.

Speaking with MSNBC host Alex Witt, the attorney jokingly called Habba's courtroom skills a "comedy of bumbling" because it appears she has no idea how to conduct herself in a courtroom.

Before he got to the point, he noted that Trump was "brought to heel" by the massive penalty imposed by a 9-person jury.

"He [Trump] has not publicly mentioned E. Jean Carroll since the ruling. Could he be putting himself on some sort of defamation budget?" host Witt joked.

"Yeah, I think so," Litman replied. "And I think it is significant because it shows him having been brought to heel. You saw his supporters saying, 'He doesn't take any crap. He does what he wants and gets away with it.' Here, he did what he wanted but didn't get away with it; he got socked once a little bit and now very harshly."

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"I think maybe Alina Habba, maybe in his own mind, that's a path I can't go and I've been burned very severely, we will see," he continued before adding, "But I think it will be a really encouraging sign that the legal system can actually constrain him."

Addressing Habba later, he continued, "She does seem to be perfectly chosen to be the wrong lawyer in the courtroom. She got generally mocked for not having the basic skills, which I think is true, but more than that, she tussled with the judge. she tussled with, you know, everything about the proceedings. She was Trumpian."

According to attorney Shan Wu, the swift E. Jean Carroll jury decision to award her $83.3 million in damages after being defamed by Donald Trump is both good news and bad news for the former president.

In his column for the Daily Beast, Wu contends that by rushing the awarding of damages out on Friday, the former president was given a break because it could easily have been much more if they had waited until after the weekend.

Donald Trump lawyer Alina Habba's "flagrant disregard" for courtroom rules could pave the way for Judge Lewis Kaplan to refer her to the State Bar for a hearing and investigation.

According to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, the E. Jean Carroll case judge would be completely within his rights to ask the New York State Bar Association to review the former president's attorney's conduct after Kaplan repeatedly was forced to admonish her during the two-week trial.

On her Substack platform, Vance suggested that Habba's lack of legal skills and knowledge about the rules of evidence aren't the issue so much as the chaos she repeatedly created in the civil trial she ultimately lost which cost her client $83.3 million on Friday.

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According to Vance, who called Habba's outbursts "disgraceful," she, "... would not be surprised to see the Judge refer her to the Bar Association for disciplinary action."

Clarifying her reasoning, she explained, "It wasn’t her novice mistakes that were the issue, although they caused a lot of comments. It was her flagrant disregard of the Judge’s decisions about arguments that could and could not be made to the jury. She trod on those rulings despite repeated warnings from the Judge."

Vance added the proper procedure when a lawyer feels the judge erred is to take it up later in an appeal.

According to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a cautionary warning provided to the jury deciding the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial by the judge all but assured there would be no jury nullification in support of Donald Trump.

On her Substack platform, the former prosecutor admitted she had never seen anything quite like the comments made by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Senior Judge Lewis Kaplan as he sent the jury off to decide the case that ended with the former president being slapped with an $83.3 million judgment.

While praising Kaplan for keeping the trial on track and not putting up with any foolishness from Trump and his lead attorney Alina Habba, Vance suggested a key turning point came when Kaplan made an "unusual" appeal to the jurors.

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Pointing out that Trump was likely banking on "jury nullification" from just one juror to avoid a massive penalty, Vance wrote, "Judge Kaplan had an unusual inclusion in his jury instructions, something I’ve never heard a judge do before. He read from the Constitution. He talked about 'we the people' and the establishment of a justice system. And he referred to the history of the Southern District of New York, where federal courts have been in existence since 1789."

Donald Trump attorney Alina Habba's abrasive behavior and her decision to defend the former president in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial with an eye on pleasing him, and not trying to convince a jury, in the end cost her client tens of millions of dollars..

That is the opinion of former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, which he explained as part of his duties hosting MSNBC's "The Weekend."

During a panel discussion on the stunning $83.3 million judgment levied against the former president on Friday, Steele stated he wanted to focus on Habba and shared a clip of her combative impromptu press conference outside the courthouse after the verdict was read.

Noting that Habba claimed defending Trump was "the proudest thing I could ever do," Steele reminded viewers of Habba's previous claims that she would rather be "pretty than smart" to which she replied, "pretty" because she can "fake being smart."

After introducing the clip by stating, "One of the things I found very fascinating as we looked at the professionals in the room, E. Jean Carroll's lawyer, and those who were laying out the case before the judge, the jury, and then there is Alina Habba, I would like to play her response to this verdict," he continued afterward with, "I recall a comment that she made at one point where she was asked, would you rather be pretty or smart, and a response was, I would rather be pretty because I can fake being smart."

Laughing he continued, "So the reality of it is that you need to be smart in the courtroom. You need to understand that her reaction a lot of times shocked."

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"It was performative, and it was to appease Trump, it was not to deal with the facts that were at hand, and first off, this was not a case where you are trying to prevent him from being judged a sexual predator," he explained. "That had already taken place. This was about something very different. She seemed to be out of sorts with what her mission was, and actually wound up costing her client I think an incredible amount of money."