A federal appeals court has thwarted a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor’s appointment after upholding a previous court’s ruling that she is not legally serving in her role.
Far-right MAGA loyalist Sigal Chattah, whom former Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed as Nevada’s acting U.S. attorney last year, was ruled to have been unlawfully appointed by the Justice Department in an order issued on Monday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The federal court’s opinion, delivered by Donald Trump-appointed Judge Eric D. Miller, affirmed a district court’s order disqualifying Chattah from supervising the prosecutions of three Nevada defendants and invalidating her appointment as acting U.S. attorney.
Reached for comment, a DOJ official told the Daily Beast: “We disagree with the 9th Circuit’s decision and we plan to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.”
Chattah, a 2020 election denier, was named the interim U.S. attorney last April—an appointment limited to a term of 120 days, ending on July 30, 2025.
Chattah resigned a day before the term expired, announcing in her resignation letter that she “look[ed] forward to continuing to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada.”
The same day as Chattah’s resignation, Bondi designated her as the first assistant to the now-vacant office, declaring that she would serve as the acting federal prosecutor in the wake of the vacancy. The new appointment allowed her to remain in the role for an additional 210 days without Senate confirmation.
Nevada federal defense lawyers in three cases challenged Chattah’s appointment, arguing that her term had expired in July. In September, U.S. District Judge David Campbell sided with the defense attorneys and disqualified Chattah from supervising those prosecutions—a ruling the federal appeals court later affirmed.
“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,” Miller wrote in the circuit court’s opinion. “We hold that the Attorney General cannot do so.”
Chattah, 51, isn’t the only federal prosecutor that the Trump administration has tried to install without Senate confirmation.
Last August, a New Jersey judge ruled that Alina Habba, a former personal attorney for the president, had been unlawfully serving as the state’s federal prosecutor following a similar extension of her role.
She didn’t take the news well, telling Fox News’s Sean Hannity at the time that “I am the pick of the president, I am the pick of Pam Bondi, our attorney general, and I will serve this country like I have for the last several years in any capacity.”
“We will not fall to rogue judges. We will not fall to people trying to be political when they should just be doing their job: respecting the president,” she added.
