Trump and his Department of Justice have a very bad practice of appointing federal prosecutors without bothering to have them confirmed by the U.S. Senate, as the Constitution requires.

Several of his choices have been disqualified by federal courts. If a vacancy exists, the judges appoint a replacement. But Trump and Bondi then fire the judges’s choice.

Remember Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s personal attorney? He named her the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia. She got an indictment against New York State Attorney General Letitia James, but she was never confirmed by the Senate. After six months as interim U.S. Attorney, she was removed by federal judges, and the indictment she won was dismissed as illegal.

In New Jersey, Trump picked another personal attorney, Alina Habba, as U.S. Attorney, again bypassed the Senate, and a panel of judges removed her. When the judges named a qualified replacement, Trump and the Department of Justice fired him. Having been involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits, Trump has a very long list of personal attorneys.

The DOJ selected three prosecutors to take the place of Alina Habba.

Judge Matthew W. Brann ruled that the appointment of the three prosecutors was illegal. Brann, a conservative Republican appointed by Obama, said that this unconstitutional maneuver put in jeopardy all the convictions secured by this office since December, when the troika took charge.

He wrote:

Using italics that demonstrated the heightened tenor of his ruling, he wrote that the Trump administration had shown through its statements and actions that it cared far more about who was running the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office “than whether it is running at all.”

Judge Brann pointedly said that the president’s continued reliance on unlawful mechanisms to appoint top federal prosecutors meant that “scores of dangerous criminals could have their cases dismissed or convictions eventually reversed…”

During Mr. Trump’s second term, when judges have installed a U.S. attorney, the Justice Department has fired them. After it did so with an interim U.S. attorney in upstate New York recently, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, wrote on social media: “Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does. See Article II of our Constitution.”

Judge Brann, a federal judge who typically sits in Pennsylvania but was designated to handle the matter in New Jersey, referred to that statement and others like it as “combative (and legally incomplete).” He said that such assertions clearly indicated that “the Department of Justice would not permit anyone to hold any United States attorney’s office if that person was not handpicked by the president…”

Judge Brann joins a growing collection of district court judges in New Jersey and around the country whose rulings are increasingly colored by their frustration with what they have consistently characterized as the lawless behavior of the Trump administration.

In several such rulings, judges appear to be seeking strategies to address frequent violations of the law. At least three in New Jersey have proposed new processes or tactics that they clearly hope will curb the administration’s conduct.

At the same time, the administration has grown more and more belligerent toward the judiciary. Top officials ridiculed the Supreme Court after it ruled against Mr. Trump’s tariffs, and Justice Department lawyers began an appeals court brief last week by saying: “Courts cannot tell the president what to say. Courts cannot tell the president what not to say.”

Since last summer, the New Jersey prosecutor’s office has been a casualty of the chaos created by the Trump administration’s moves to retain control. Dozens of seasoned lawyers have left the office, and trial court judges have been forced to grapple with the possibility that decisions they make about criminal cases could be overturned.

The Trump administration is trying to destroy what it does not control: the electoral process, the legal system, the public’s belief in the fairness of democracy as a way of government.