New Jersey

When the acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, dropped all charges against Ras Baraka, the Democratic mayor of New Jersey’s Newark, it might’ve seemed as if the legal dispute were over. It was not.

On the contrary, a few weeks after the incident that sparked the dropped criminal case, the tables have turned, and Baraka is now suing Habba. The New York Times reported:

[Baraka] filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, that argues that his arrest was motivated by political malice, not justice. The lawsuit also names Ricky Patel, a supervising agent with Homeland Security Investigations who led the arrest of Mr. Baraka on May 9 outside a 1,000-bed detention center near Newark Liberty International Airport that has become a flashpoint in President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Baraka’s civil suit, which accuses federal authorities of false arrest and malicious prosecution, also accuses Habba of defamation......

Habba announced a few days after the arrest that her office had agreed to drop the charges against the Newark mayor. But before the case was dismissed altogether, the federal judge to whom the case was assigned took the opportunity to scold Habba’s office for its handling of the matter.

Indeed, federal magistrate judge André Espinosa reprimanded the federal prosecutors for several minutes, calling the decision to abandon the charges “embarrassing.”

“The hasty arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, followed swiftly by the dismissal of these trespassing charges a mere 13 days later, suggests a worrying misstep by your office,” Espinosa said. “An arrest, particularly of a public figure, is not a preliminary investigative tool. It is a severe action, carrying significant reputational and personal consequences, and it should only be undertaken after a thorough, dispassionate evaluation of credible evidence.”

The mayor was soon after overheard saying, in reference to the judicial admonishment, “Jesus, he tore these people a new a--hole. Good grief.”