New Jersey mayor sues Trump ally Alina Habba over charges
The mayor of New Jersey's largest city is suing the Trump administration for 'malicious prosecution' after federal prosecutors dropped a criminal charge against him for allegedly trespassing at an immigrant detention facility.
Attorneys for Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who is one of the six Democratic candidates running for governor, say interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba 'directed and ratified the unlawful arrest' of Baraka. Then, they say, Habba acted as a 'political operative,' defaming him in inflammatory statements on social media and in TV interviews.
'Habba was not serving in a prosecutorial function when she acted with DHS agents in the scheme to arrest Mayor Baraka,' according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday morning in U.S. District Court in Newark. The suit seeks an unspecified amount of 'compensatory damages for pain, suffering, stress, humiliation' and other purported consequences of the episode, in addition to punitive damages.
Baraka was arrested for allegedly trespassing last month at Delaney Hall, an immigrant detention facility owned by a private prison company and recently opened under the Trump administration. The charge was later dropped for what Habba said was the 'sake of moving forward.'
Habba has also charged Rep. LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat who visited the facility to conduct oversight on that day, with federal felonies for allegedly assaulting two federal agents.
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