Alina Habba 'Should Expect Sanctions'—Lawyer

Alina Habba "should expect sanctions" for her "misrepresentations" after the Donald Trump lawyer asked for his E. Jean Carroll trial to be delayed because she had been exposed to COVID, then attended Trump's New Hampshire victory party.

Habba is representing the Republican in the second defamation trial brought against him by writer and journalist Carroll.

In May 2023, Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages after a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming the one-time Elle columnist. The former president has repeatedly denied sexually assaulting Carroll at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in the 1990s.

Carroll's lawyers are seeking another $10 million in compensatory damages and substantially more after the former president continued to deny the accusations that he assaulted her; he said he had no idea who Carroll is and that she was not his type. In May, Trump called Carroll's account fake and labeled her a "whack job" during a CNN town hall broadcast. In early September, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump's comments against Carroll were defamatory.

Before proceedings began on Monday, Habba asked Kaplan for a one-day adjournment when she said she wasn't feeling well after one or both of her parents were exposed to COVID-19. The attorney tested negative for the virus on Monday morning, as did her co-counsel in the case, Michael Madaio, but Habba said that her babysitter also has symptoms.

In addition to Habba, one juror has been feeling sick and is being tested for COVID-19, according to NBC News.

The trial is not scheduled to resume until Thursday but on Wednesday, Habba was spotted at Trump's campaign event in New Hampshire.

Trump won the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary on January 23 with over 50 percent of the vote.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Steve Martin, a Northern Kentucky lawyer, wrote: "Lawyers have many obligations. Among the more universal duties is officer of the court. The next time Alina Habba appears in court the judge will put her under oath and inquire about misrepresentations to the bench. In open court the judge has contempt powers. Alina should expect sanctions. Judges really really don't like being lied to! She should appear with separate counsel. She won't think that far into the deck. If she had that capacity she would have never joined the League of Lost Trump Lawyers."

The allegation that Habba "lied to" the judge is unsubstantiated and Newsweek contacted Habba by email to comment on this story.

MSNBC's legal analyst Lisa Rubin said she believed Habba didn't lie about feeling unwell, and said "someone else" who had been present in the court may have tested positive.

"I am not insinuating Habba lied. At all," Rubin said on X. "I take her at her word. She said she had been exposed and was feeling feverish over the weekend; she also represented on Monday that she tested negative that morning.

"What I am suggesting, however is that *someone else* who has been a regular courtroom presence has COVID, without which there would be little reason for a three-day delay."

Meanwhile, former Trump staffer Dylan Quattrucci, who was the Republican's deputy state director in New Hampshire during his 2020 campaign, was removed from the Trump victory party after he posted a photo of himself with Habba on X.