This could land Alina Habba under investigation
In the last two days, there has been an angry exchange of letters between defendant Trump’s lawyer in the New York civil defamation case, Alana Habba, and plaintiff E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer, Robbie Kaplan. The source of the verbal jousting was an article in the New York Post sourcing an alleged former attorney in the law firm in which Judge Kaplan was a senior partner before his federal judicial appointment. The article stated that for a short time, Robbie Kaplan worked as a new lawyer in the firm at the same time as Judge Kaplan.
Alana Habba seized on the Post article to publicly proclaim, without any supporting evidence, that her client Trump was prejudiced at trial because Judge Kaplan was an alleged mentor of Robbie Kaplan when the latter was a fledgling lawyer in the law firm in which they both practiced law for a short time.
Judge Kaplan has been a judge for the last 30 years, and has not been connected with that law firm or any other attorney in the practice of law. He is ethically barred from any type of law practice while serving as a judge.
In response to Ms. Habba’s accusations, Robbie Kaplan sent a scathing letter to the court, calling for the judge to invoke sanctions against Habba. Just this afternoon, Habba quickly backed off her accusatory remarks in another letter to the judge and opposing counsel, saying that she wasn’t making any accusations, but was just asking questions because of the newspaper article. She did not, in fact, talk with the alleged attorney source for the newspaper.
I am a retired lawyer with many years of experience in court. I have never seen such an underhanded, incompetent, impudent, and unethical attorney such as Alena Habba. Her whining, complaining, and accusatory conduct after a jury finding her client Trump liable for $83.3 million, is outrageous, and could rise to being defamatory.
Habba is emulating the style of her boss Trump, who makes false accusations and then retracts them whenever he’s called out about them. The problem is, the Pandora has been let out of the box, and the false accusations of Habba about the unfair jury system will resound among the MAGA cult members and gullible voters from now on. It’s offensive to me and the vast majority of attorneys in the U.S.
It also bears pointing out that the New York Post is a right-wing rag, which frequently publishes stories without much foundation or truth. It is hardly a source of reliable information. Alana Habba certainly knows, or should know, that there is no way that Judge Kaplan, as a senior partner in a law firm, would be mentoring a new lawyer in the firm. I understand the workings of a law firm, as I was once a partner in one. If there was any lawyer that was mentoring her, it was in all probability a lower attorney on the totem pole. A senior partner in a large, prestigious law firm would not expend their high-priced billable time mentoring a new attorney in the office.
Habba deserves sanctions as well as an investigation by the New York state bar ethics board about her fitness to practice law. She is a pox on our legal system.
