Left: Sigal Chattah, left, attorney for Guard the Constitution Project founder Shawn Meehan, and Monti Levy, right, attorney for Nevada Republican Party delegate Eileen Rice, appear in a Las Vegas courtroom on Monday, March 4, 2024. (Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP). Right: Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, center, arrives for her deposition at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Friday, May 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.).
Another of former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s holdover “acting” U.S. attorneys has been blocked from overseeing prosecutions brought against those challenging her authority. On Monday, a federal appeals court said the Trump administration’s continued “tactics” and “maneuvers” to keep Sigal Chattah in charge of the Nevada U.S. Attorney’s Office were unlawful.
In a unanimous ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Chattah is “not lawfully serving” as acting U.S. attorney in Nevada under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. The decision adds to a growing list of federal court rulings rejecting the Trump administration’s efforts to bypass the Senate’s constitutional advice-and-consent role in filling powerful federal prosecutor posts.
Instead of using that process to install permanent U.S. attorneys, the Justice Department has repeatedly sought to keep preferred interim appointees in office after their 120-day terms expired by recasting them as acting U.S. attorneys for several additional months. In some instances, courts have found, the department attempted that workaround by removing court-appointed successors during a vacancy.
Writing for the panel, U.S. Circuit Judge Eric Miller, who was appointed by Donald Trump, said the Justice Department “cannot” make Chattah the acting U.S. attorney simply by firing the first assistant U.S. attorney — the office’s second-ranking official — who was already serving in that role.
“The maneuvers used to extend Chattah’s time atop the U.S. Attorney’s Office are not unique to the District of Nevada. The Attorney General has employed similar—though not always identical—tactics to extend the service of other temporary appointees who have not been confirmed by the Senate. The district court’s reasoning was consistent with that of the other courts to consider those tactics, every one of which has concluded that they violate the limits imposed by the FVRA,” the opinion said.
The 9th Circuit panel pointed to a series of rulings that rejected similar temporary U.S. attorney appointments, including those involving Alina Habba in New Jersey, Bilal Essayli in California, Lindsey Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia, John Sarcone in the Northern District of New York, and Ryan Ellison in New Mexico.
Miller was joined by Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Sidney Thomas, a Bill Clinton appointee, and U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr., a Trump appointee who sat on the three-judge appellate panel by designation.
The panel upheld Senior U.S. District Judge David Campbell’s ruling from October, which sided with criminal defendants Giann Icob Salazar Del Real, Devonte Devon Jackson, and Jorge Enriquez, Jr. in holding — without dismissing indictments — that their prosecutor had to be disqualified.
Campbell, a George W. Bush appointee in Arizona, said the FVRA was enacted by Congress “precisely” to prevent a scenario where a president and attorney general might attempt to backfill anyone into a top prosecutor role.
“The Court will disqualify Ms. Chattah from participating in or supervising Defendants’ prosecutions,” Campbell said.
The 9th Circuit, referring to Chattah as the “putative Acting United States Attorney,” affirmed the disqualification order and gave “no weight” to the DOJ’s reliance on an Office of Legal Counsel opinion from 2001.
Although the OLC concluded “first assistants may be elevated at any point after the vacancy arises,” the court said, the opinion was “inconsistent with earlier executive interpretations of the [FVRA] statute, and it relies on reasoning that has since been rejected.”
Chattah earlier defended her appointment as “not unconstitutional” and “not done in a nefarious manner,” according to local CBS affiliate KLAS.
“You know, a lot of these people, I know that they’re scared because I know where a lot of the bodies are buried because I come from the defense world,” she said.
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