A federal judge blasted prosecutors in N.J., saying Trump’s DOJ has ‘lost the confidence and the trust of this court’

A federal judge in New Jersey this week declined to hold a routine sentencing hearing because of what he said were unresolved questions about who is leading that state’s U.S. Attorney’s Office — a decision the judge made during a contentious proceeding in which he also kicked a prosecutor out of his courtroom.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi served as another example of the ongoing and bitter clash between the federal judiciary and President Donald Trump’s administration. That conflict — which has played out in jurisdictions across the country — has been particularly acute in New Jersey, where judges in recent months have ruled that the Justice Department has violated the Constitution in its attempts to unilaterally install top prosecutors, and in its decision to continue detaining immigrants in ways that judges have repeatedly described as unlawful.

In court Monday, Quraishi used blunt language to describe the situation, saying he didn’t believe the answers offered by one prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosenblum. And he ordered another — Mark Coyne, the office’s chief of appeals — to leave the courtroom after Coyne tried to speak to the judge despite not being an official party to the case.

“Generations of Assistant U.S. Attorneys had built the goodwill of that office for your generation to destroy it within a year,” Quarishi told Rosenblum at one point.

By the end of the hearing, Quraishi — appointed in 2021 by then-President Joe Biden — said he was ordering all three lawyers leading the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey to testify in his courtroom before he would decide whether to allow the sentencing to proceed.

And Quraishi said he would not rule out the possibility of seeking additional testimony from other Justice Department officials, including Alina Habba — a top aide to Attorney General Pam Bondi and the former interim top prosecutor in New Jersey — and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Justice Department’s second-in-command.

Representatives of the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond Tuesday to requests for comment.

The underlying case was a child pornography prosecution from 2024, in which Francisco Villafane was accused of possessing sexually explicit photos and videos of a teenage girl. Villafane agreed to plead guilty last year, court records show, and he was scheduled to be sentenced Monday.

But as Villafane’s case has moved through court, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has become embroiled in a complex leadership drama.

Federal judges have ruled three times since last summer that the Trump administration had violated the law in its attempts to install top officials without input from Congress or the judiciary. The most recent ruling came last week, when U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said the office’s current leadership structure — a novel arrangement in which three lawyers supervise different divisions — was not legally imposed and “requires disqualification” of the officials.

Still, Brann paused his decision to allow the government a chance to appeal.

In court Monday, Quraishi said he’d offered Rosenblum, the prosecutor, the chance to delay the sentencing “to appreciate the impact, if any, of Judge Brann’s recent decision,” according to a transcript published by the New York Times, which first reported on the case.

But Rosenblum declined, saying that because Brann had paused his ruling, the office believed it could proceed with the leadership triumvirate still in charge.

That led to a series of questions from Quraishi, including about the quality of the office’s investigation into Villafane, which he called “sloppy.”

Still, most of his ire appeared to center on questions about the office’s leadership structure. And when Coyne, an office supervisor, sought to chime in, Quraishi first noted that Coyne had never filed a notice of appearance in the case, then told him to sit down and stop talking before ordering him to leave.

“You don’t get to blindside the court and do whatever it is you guys want to do,” the judge said.

After Coyne left, Quraishi continued questioning Rosenblum, asking whether the office’s current leaders were continuing to seek input from Habba, the former top prosecutor who Brann ruled had also been unlawfully appointed. Rosenblum said he didn’t know.

Quraishi also asked if the office had considered backup plans for how to handle cases that might be affected by the leadership questions. Rosenblum again said he didn’t know.

By the end of the hearing — after Quraishi said he was going to order the office’s leaders to testify — the judge told Rosenblum to deliver a message to his colleagues.

“You have lost the confidence and the trust of this court,” he said. “You have lost the confidence and the trust of the New Jersey legal community, and you are losing the trust and confidence of the public.”

The heated exchange was not Quraishi’s first time forcibly pushing back against the Trump administration. Last month, the judge criticized the government for continuing to employ a policy mandating detention for nearly all undocumented immigrants — despite opinions from dozens of judges nationwide calling the practice illegal.

“The undersigned will not stand idly by and allow this intentional misconduct to go on. It ends today,” Quraishi wrote, adding that he was prepared to order leaders of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Homeland Security to testify under oath if mandatory detentions continued.

Detentions have continued: Nearly 150 detainees have filed petitions with the federal court in New Jersey in the three weeks since, court records show.

In the most recent case, Quraishi has ordered the office’s leadership triumvirate — Philip Lamparello, Jordan Fox, and Ari Fontecchio — to appear before him in May.

The sentencing will remain on hold until after that hearing, he ruled.