'Bogus motion by the Trump team': Legal experts mock Habba’s latest 'nonsense' filing

Alina Habba — who represented former President Donald Trump in writer E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit — is getting roasted for her most recent filing challenging US District Judge Lewis Kaplan's impartiality.

Salon reported that in the 1990s, both Judge Kaplan and Carroll attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation) worked at the same white shoe law firm. An unnamed source claiming to be a partner at the firm told the New York Post that the fact that Lewis Kaplan mentored Roberta Kaplan was "insane" and "incestuous." Habba used that to argue that there was an undisclosed conflict of interest and that there should new a trial.

"If Your Honor truly worked with Ms. Kaplan in any capacity — especially if there was a mentor/mentee relationship — that fact should have been disclosed before any case involving these parties was permitted to proceed forward," Habba wrote, requesting more information about the relationship between Judge Kaplan and Carroll's attorney. She also argued that Carroll's other attorney, Shawn Crowley, once clerking for Judge Kaplan was an additional conflict of interest.

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CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Habba's filing was "a bogus motion by the Trump team," and that the fact that older, more established attorneys often mentor new lawyers doesn't prove the need to convene a new trial.

"There’s nothing there," Honig said. "Every judge in that courthouse knows, socializes with, has worked with, sometimes maybe mentored, dozens, hundreds of attorneys in this city. I used to practice in that courthouse in front of judges who used to be my colleagues, my supervisors. If anything, they were tougher on me as a result of it. That is not enough for a conflict of interest."

Attorney Andrew Fleischmann said on X/Twitter that Habba "waived the issue" when declining to object to Crowley clerking for Judge Kaplan. Former federal prosecutor Daniel R. Alonso was more curt in his criticism, tweeting that Habba's motion was "nonsense."

"[A] lawyer would have to be an idiot not to know that the judge and Ms. Kaplan were at the same firm," Alonso said. "Knock it off!"

READ MORE: 'None. Do you understand that word?' Judge Kaplan smacks down Trump lawyer Alina Habba

Watch the video of Honig's remarks below, or by clicking this link.