Appeals court rules Nevada’s top federal prosecutor was unlawfully appointed

By Jacob Knutson

Attorney Sigal Chattah appears in court in Las Vegas, March 4, 2024. (Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP, File)
Attorney Sigal Chattah appears in court in Las Vegas, March 4, 2024. (Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP, File)

A federal appeals panel ruled Monday that Sigal Chattah, a staunch Trump ally, has been unlawfully leading the U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada for more than a year.

A three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said that a district court correctly ruled last September that former Attorney General Pam Bondi violated federal vacancy laws by shifting Chattah’s titles in order to designate her as acting U.S. attorney.

The ruling delivers yet another blow to President Donald Trump’s efforts to advance his partisan goals by placing hand-picked loyalists at the helm of U.S. attorneys’ offices without going through the Senate confirmation process. 

“These cases present the question whether the Attorney General can make someone an Acting United States Attorney—bypassing the usual requirement that a U.S. Attorney be confirmed by the Senate—by designating that person as the first assistant to an already-vacant office of U.S. Attorney. We hold that the Attorney General cannot do so,” the panel, which was composed of two Trump appointees and one appointed by former President Bill Clinton, unanimously ruled.

The panel also held that the attorney general cannot delegate all of a U.S. attorney’s powers to a single person.

Like other Trump loyalists, Chattah will likely be able to continue leading the U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada as first assistant, the second-in-command who steps in to lead offices during attorney vacancies. But she won’t enjoy all the powers that would have been granted to her as acting U.S. attorney.

Additionally, the appeals judges upheld the district court’s disqualification of Chattah from supervising three criminal cases. Potentially, those disqualifications could also affect her ability to oversee other cases.

Chattah, a former Republican National Committee official, has used her post to open investigations into her past political enemies and urge the FBI to pursue explicitly partisan probes into the 2020 election.