Chicago: Alina Habba, an attorney from Iraq, has been one of Donald Trump's most tenacious defenders during the past two years' worth of legal battles involving him.

She is married to lawyer Matthew Eyet, who runs his own law firm in New Jersey, and is a managing partner of the New York firm Habba Madaio and Associates.

Habba and her two siblings were born in Summit, New Jersey, to parents who were Chaldean Catholics and had fled Iraq in the early 1980s due to the persecution of Christians for their faith. Saad F. Habba, her father, is a gastroenterologist.

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A grand jury in Manhattan last week indicted Trump on more than 30 counts stemming from claims that he paid adult film star Stormy Daniels "hush money" to keep her from disclosing information about their relationship.

Trump surrendered to police on Tuesday in Manhattan, then showed up before Judge Juan Merchan and pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The 39-year-old Habba has been one of Trump's most outspoken supporters, which has put her in the legal firing line. On January 19 in Florida, US District Court Judge Donald Middlebrook imposed sanctions on a legal team that included Trump.

He determined that the attorneys and their client were jointly liable for $937,989 in damages as a result of a lawsuit they filed against 31 defendants, alleging that they "tried to destroy" Trump's life and "rigged the 2016 election in favour of Hillary Clinton."

The judge threw out their case, declaring it to have "fatal substantive defects," and accused the attorneys of disobeying his directive not to bring up the disproven allegations.

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Trump was charged with a crime on Tuesday, making him the first former president to do so. After a grand jury reviewed the proof provided by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, he was indicted.

The accusations concern alleged payments made to Daniels on Trump's behalf to keep her from discussing their relationship in public. Any wrongdoing by Trump is denied.

Habba recently responded when asked if she thought her client could receive a fair trial in New York: "No, no, I think it's very difficult. I'd like to believe in this state, but after working with him for a while and appearing in court there for a while, I can assure you that it's not the same as representing someone else.

The breadth of Habba's legal experience includes corporate litigation and formation, commercial real estate, family law, the financial services sector, and matters relating to construction.

She worked as a legal assistant for Eugene J. Codey, Jr., the presiding judge of the Civil Superior Court in Essex County, New Jersey, before starting her own practise.

In a $100 million lawsuit filed by the former president in September 2021 against his niece Mary Trump and The New York Times Company, accusing them of "an insidious plot" and conspiracy to leak details about his tax returns, Habba represented Trump. Mary Trump then sued her uncle, alleging that she had been cheated out of her inheritance, but the judge dismissed the case.

She has led investigations meant to clear Trump's name and get many of the lawsuits filed against him in recent years dismissed, even though she is not lead counsel in the case surrounding his indictment on Tuesday.

This week, according to the celebrity gossip website TMZ, Habba came under fire for equating Trump's legal woes with those of African American rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, and asserting that his arrest would only increase his popularity—a viewpoint shared by many conservative commentators.

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E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist who accused the former president of sexually assaulting her in New York City in the middle of the 1990s, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump, which Habba is representing in court. Trump has categorically refuted the accusation. He was questioned in a deposition by Carroll's attorneys in October of last year.

Additionally, Habba was a member of the legal team that supported Trump during a federal inquiry into claims that he handled classified documents discovered at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, improperly. FBI agents allegedly removed boxes of papers from his home that contained classified and secret documents.