A federal appeals court has definitively ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully appointed Sigal Chattah as Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, upholding a lower court’s decision that she was never validly leading the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that the Justice Department’s attempt to keep Chattah in her role through interim appointments and subsequent delegations was invalid under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. Specifically, the court found that Chattah could not automatically assume the acting U.S. Attorney role as a ‘first assistant’ because she did not hold that position when the vacancy initially occurred, and that the Attorney General could not simply delegate all U.S. Attorney functions to her to create a de facto acting prosecutor. This ruling disqualifies Chattah from supervising prosecutions in at least three criminal cases and represents a significant legal setback for the administration’s strategy of keeping temporary appointees in powerful federal prosecutor positions without Senate confirmation, echoing similar disqualifications of other Trump-era appointees like Alina Habba in New Jersey.
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