"It's another day, so we have another Trump DOJ appointee found illegally cosplaying as a U.S. Attorney. This time it's Sigal Chattah, the District of Nevada's interim top federal prosecutor, who follows in Alina Habba's ignominious footsteps by overstaying the 120-day limit on her interim appointment and forcing a federal judge to explain "that's not how any of this works.""
""The Court cannot accept the government's assertion that the Attorney General has power to designate anyone she chooses as first assistant and have that person become the acting U.S. Attorney," the judge wrote in a 32-page ruling. "The [Federal Vacancies Reform Act] was enacted to put an end to precisely such Executive actions." Chattah earned her temporary position as the top prosecutor in Nevada the same way most Trump appointees did: by being a shameless loyalist with few qualifications."
"Just like Habba's debacle in New Jersey, the administration tried to get around the expiration of Chattah's appointment by naming her simultaneously as her own first assistant and claiming the Federal Vacancies Reform Act then allowed her to automatically ascend to the acting U.S. Attorney role when her own job ended by force of law. Make sense? Yeah, a federal judge didn't think so either."
Sigal Chattah served as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada and exceeded the 120-day statutory limit on interim appointments. The administration attempted to circumvent that limit by naming her concurrently as her own first assistant and invoking the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to elevate her automatically. A federal judge rejected the government's approach, stating the Attorney General cannot designate anyone to become acting U.S. Attorney and that the FVRA prevents such executive workarounds. Chattah's temporary appointment followed partisan support and limited prosecutorial experience, and the permanent role still requires Senate approval.
Read at Above the Law
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