Appeals Court Blocks Trump Scheme on US Attorneys
INSIDE: Sigal Chattah ... Stephen Miller ... Tina Peters
It’s All Part of Retribution on Blue States
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that disqualified Sigal Chattah as the purported top prosecutor in the Nevada United States Attorney’s Office.
The ruling deals a blow to the Trump scheme of bypassing Senate confirmation to install poorly qualified loyalists as top federal prosecutors in blue states — a key element of Trump’s campaign of retribution.
The particular element of the broader scheme at issue here was whether the attorney general can dole out the “first assistant U.S. attorney” designation to just anyone and install acting U.S. attorneys of its choosing in already-vacant positions.
Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, the first assistant U.S. attorney automatically assumes the role of acting U.S. attorney when that post becomes vacant. The Trump DOJ took that provision and ran with it, using the first assistant designation on people like Chattah to circumvent both Senate confirmation and the law allowing federal judges to name interim U.S. attorneys.
What the the three-judge 9th Circuit panel (two Trump appointees and a Clinton appointee) unanimously decided is that the first assistant must have been serving in that role at the time of the vacancy in the U.S. attorney position in order to automatically ascend. Someone like Chattah, who was designated first assistant after the fact of the vacancy, is not eligible to serve as acting U.S. attorney on the basis of that designation.
The “rule of automatic succession applies only to a first assistant who held that position at the time the vacancy arose; it does not apply to a first assistant who never served under a validly appointed official,” the appeal court decided.
The appeals court also rejected the attempts by Trump attorneys general to “create a de facto Acting U.S. Attorney by delegating all of the functions and duties of the U.S. Attorney to someone else.”
Chattah’s case is instructive because of how many elements of manipulation and scheming are involved. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi properly named Chattah to the statutorily mandated 120-day term as acting U.S. attorney on April 1, 2025. Then things got weird.
Chattah is a Trump loyalist with no prior prosecutorial experience who has reportedly abused the office for personal and political gain. The federal judges in Nevada did not move to retain her in the role, which they have the power to do under statute.
Just before Chattah’s 120-day term ended, she resigned and Bond designated her as first assistant U.S. attorney. Bondi’s order declared that by law Chattah automatically ascended back into the acting role she had just resigned. In a belt-and-suspenders move, Bondi also made Chattah a special U.S. attorney and purported to delegate all the powers of the Nevada U.S. attorney to her.
The appeals court rejected both moves as unlawful.
It’s important to note that these challenges to the unlawful appointments of U.S. attorneys — like the similarly successful challenges of Alina Habba’s appointment in New Jersey — are coming from criminal defendants seeking to have their indictments thrown out. (The lower court in the consolidated cases brought by multiple criminal defendants had declined to dismiss the indictments, and the appeals court yesterday said it lacked jurisdiction at this stage to consider whether dismissal of the indictments was an appropriate remedy).
So not only is the Trump DOJ engaged in squirrelly workarounds to install loyalists in blue states and bypass the Senate, but it’s risking having legitimate criminal prosecutions thrown out in order to do so.
Keep an Eye on This
I know this seems even more in the weeds, but the precise mechanism has been finalized for running one portion of the Justice Department directly out of the White House to target what it euphemistically calls “fraud” but really means elected Democrats in blue states.
The move — reported by Bloomberg’s Ben Penn — shifts bureaucratic power from Main Justice’s Criminal Division to the new National Fraud Enforcement Division, which is being closely overseen at the White House by Vice President JD Vance and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
“The regulation also creates leeway for the new operation to take on a vast array of unspecified other cases,” Penn notes.
All indications are that this will be a new tool of retribution even more directly wielded by the White House than Attorney General Todd Blanche is. Also, as I mentioned yesterday, these White House-driven investigations don’t have to yield prosecutions in order to be beneficial to Trump and damaging to his targets. Wide-ranging subpoenas on spurious claims of fraud gives the White House access to documents, communications, personal information, and other potentially useful fodder to use against Democrats and other Trump foes.
A Match Made in MAGA Heaven?
Shasta County, California — which has been a hotbed (or petri dish, as we once called it) of Big Lie boosterism — may be hiring Tina Peters, the convicted former Colorado county elections official newly freed from prison, to help run its elections.
Clint Curtis, the outgoing Shasta County clerk and registrar of voters, said in an interview with a conservative radio host that he’s bringing Peters on next month as the new assistant registrar of voters. “She has experience,” he said. “And she’s able to take the rocks and arrows.”
Some words of caution about the absurdity of all this, from the New York Times:
It was unclear how real Mr. Curtis’s job offer actually was or whether Ms. Peters would accept it. Ms. Peters’s prison sentence was commuted, but the terms of her parole limit her ability to leave Colorado. And Mr. Curtis will only be in office until January, after losing the June election to a former elections official whom he had fired.
So to summarize, Curtis was just voted out of office and he’s now claiming that for his last hurrah he will bring in Peters to help him run the midterms, but she might violate her parole by going to California. Got it.
The 9th Circuit Giveth and Taketh
In a 2-1 opinion, a 9th Circuit panel last week upheld one of the controversial administrative subpoenas targeting providers of transgender care and seeking invasive patient information, Chris Geidner reports in Law Dork. The majority consisted of a Bush II and Trump appointee; a Clinton appointee dissented.
Quote of the Day: Doth Protest Too Loudly
“Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”—the Trump White House, in a post on X, attacking CNN reporter Kristen Holmes for asking the president an anodyne question about Natalie Harp
E. Jean Carroll Gets to Keep Trump’s $5M
The Supreme Court rejected for the second time President Trump’s bid to challenge E. Jean Carroll’s $5 million judgment against him for defamation and sexual abuse.
Construction Work Halted in Big Bend
Amid rising opposition, including from Republican elected officials in Texas, the head of Customs and Border Protection announced Monday a pause in the controversial construction underway in Big Bend National Park to deter illegal immigration.
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After all the recent news stories on the Natalie Harp person, and her apparent rôle as overseer of trump's nocturnal ramblings on his SM site, it's a very small remove to actually becoming the poster herself, under trump's signature. I mean, the plethora of memes generated clearly are beyond the ken of a rapidly-disintegrating, 80-yr old "mind", and more pointedly, the thematic push is unmistakably toward some sort of warped idolatry, a sort of beatification or canonization of a living (?) person. All the more troubling as these memes seem to fortify trump's crumbling purchase on reality, and are leading to — even for him — increased bizarre outbursts and policy edicts.
And where is Melania?
As an old plaintiff’s PI attorney, I marvel at the possibility, maybe likelihood of let’s say a record amount of malicious prosecution settlements coming.
But, you know, if DOJ feels their responsibility is to follow the orders of an insane, infantile, vindictive little shit…