President Donald Trump nominated Sigal Chattah, a longtime Las Vegas-area attorney, to be an interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, with the expectation that the interim status would be removed if and when the Senate confirmed her.
However, the Senate confirmation process never advanced.
Please read below for as tight a summary of Sigal Chattah’s twisting saga as she and the Trump Administration sought to have her installed as U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada that I can pull together:
An early article by Dana Gentry that appeared on March 28, 2025 in the Nevada Current by Dana Gentry stated:
“Sigal Chattah has been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as interim U.S. Attorney in Nevada.”
And it says her interim status would be removed if she were confirmed by the Senate.
Here’s a look at the precise chronology of Sigal Chattah’s “Trail of Failure”:
- January 17, 2025 — The vacancy occurs
Democratic U.S. Attorney Jason Frierson resigns as President Donald Trump assumes office under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA), First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sue Fahami automatically becomes Acting U.S. Attorney because she was the first assistant when the vacancy occurred. - March 28 / April 1, 2025 — Trump administration bypasses the normal confirmation route
Attorney General Pam Bondi appoints Sigal Chattah as Interim U.S. Attorney under 28 U.S.C. § 546. The appointment takes effect April 1. The statute permits an interim U.S. Attorney to serve for 120 days.
Chattah’s three temporary positions
1. Interim U.S. Attorney — April 1 through July 2025
-
- Bondi appoints Chattah under 28 U.S.C. § 546.
- The statutory limit is 120 days.
- That means Chattah’s interim authority was due to expire at the end of July 2025.
- Ordinarily, if no Presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney had been installed by then, the judges of the District of Nevada could appoint an interim U.S. Attorney.
2. First Assistant U.S. Attorney — July 28, 2025
-
- Rather than allowing the 120-day interim appointment to expire and permitting the statutory judicial appointment mechanism to take effect, Chattah resigned as interim U.S. Attorney one day before the deadline.
- Bondi simultaneously designated her First Assistant U.S. Attorney and Special Attorney to the Attorney General.
- The administration’s theory was that, by making Chattah First Assistant after the vacancy already existed, she could then invoke the FVRA and continue serving as Acting U.S. Attorney.
- Acting U.S. Attorney — July 29, 2025 onward
-
- The DOJ treated Chattah’s new First Assistant position as giving her authority to serve as Acting U.S. Attorney.
- The administration argued this effectively allowed Chattah to remain in charge for another 210 days, rather than being constrained by the 120-day interim appointment.
- This was the legal maneuver ultimately challenged in federal court.
- Importantly, Chattah’s name was never sent to the Senate as a formal U.S. Attorney nominee.
The Senate “blue slip” problem
The reason this is important politically is that the administration faced a very different obstacle from simply not having enough Republican votes in the Senate.
Sens. Cortez Masto and Rosen made it clear that they would use the Senate’s traditional “blue-slip” process to oppose Chattah.
The blue-slip strategy gives Sens. Cortez Masto and Rosen significant leverage as Nevada’s home-state senators: under current Judiciary Committee practice, they can withhold or refuse to return their blue slips, which prevents the committee from advancing a U.S. Attorney nominee to a hearing and vote.
- Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto strongly opposed Chattah’s appointment, arguing that Trump was using the interim appointment to bypass Congress because he knew Nevada’s Senators would not support her.
- Sen. Jacky Rosen went further, explicitly saying she would not return a blue slip if Chattah were nominated for the permanent position.
- No U.S. Attorney nominee had been confirmed in the modern period when a home-state Senator withheld a blue slip, making the Nevada Senators’ position a formidable obstacle.
This appears to be the Trump Administration’s practical calculation with regard to Chattah’s nomination process:
Don’t nominate Chattah → don’t send her to Judiciary → don’t trigger the blue-slip confrontation → keep her in office through temporary appointments instead.
That distinction is important. There wasn’t a Judiciary Committee vote rejecting Chattah. The administration avoided putting her through that process in the first place.
September 2025 — The first court defeat
The maneuvering of the Trump Administration eventually landed in federal court.
Defendants in several criminal cases argued that Chattah had no lawful authority to act as U.S. Attorney after her 120-day interim appointment expired.
A federal district judge agreed with the core argument and disqualified Chattah from supervising prosecutions, finding that she could not become Acting U.S. Attorney simply by being designated First Assistant after the vacancy had already occurred.
The judge did not, however, throw out the underlying indictments.
The Justice Department appealed.
February 2026 — Trump finally nominates someone else
On February 11, 2026, the Trump administration nominated George Kelesis to be the permanent U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada.
This effectively represented the administration’s abandonment of the effort to install Chattah permanently.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s own records show:
George Kelesis — nomination received by the Senate February 11, 2026; referred to the Judiciary Committee.
But that is where the nomination has remained. As of August 27, 2026, he has not received a Judiciary Committee vote or confirmation.
And that brings the blue-slip strategy back into the story.
Cortez Masto and Rosen’s second blue-slip dilemma
Unlike Chattah, Kelesis is a substantially different nominee. He is a longtime Nevada lawyer with extensive criminal and tax litigation experience and a considerably less politically polarizing profile.
Both Nevada Senators have met with Kelesis, rather than simply announcing opposition.
- Cortez Masto’s office said she intended to conduct a “tough, thorough interview.”
- Rosen’s office said she was reviewing the nomination.
- But neither Senator’s support has translated into a Judiciary Committee appearance or vote.
- Consequently, Kelesis remains nominated but unconfirmed more than six months after his nomination was submitted.
August 17, 2026 — Ninth Circuit delivers the decisive blow
The latest and most consequential development of Chattah’s extensive trail of failure to become a legitimately seated U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada came on August 17, 2026, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s disqualification of Chattah.
The court’s holding was quite narrow but devastating to the administration’s legal theory:
The Attorney General cannot wait until an office is already vacant and then appoint someone as First Assistant for the purpose of making that person Acting U.S. Attorney.
The FVRA’s automatic-succession provision applies to a First Assistant who was already serving in that position when the vacancy occurred.
Chattah wasn’t.
Therefore, the Ninth Circuit held that the administration’s maneuver could not turn her into a lawful Acting U.S. Attorney. The court also rejected the alternative argument that the Attorney General could simply delegate all of the U.S. Attorney’s powers to Chattah and thereby accomplish the same result.
The court therefore affirmed Chattah’s disqualification from supervising the prosecutions at issue. It did not “deny her nomination,” because, again, there was never a Chattah nomination before the Senate.
Here’s the entire sequence of Chattah’s failed nomination attempts summarized in one line:
Frierson resigns → Fahami automatically becomes Acting U.S. Attorney → Bondi installs Chattah as 120-day Interim U.S. Attorney → Chattah’s term approaches expiration → Chattah resigns as Interim → Bondi makes her First Assistant → administration treats her as Acting U.S. Attorney → federal judge disqualifies her → Trump nominates Kelesis instead → Kelesis languishes in Senate Judiciary → Ninth Circuit rules the Chattah workaround unlawful.
And there is an especially striking political irony:
The Trump administration never got Chattah before the Senate Judiciary Committee, never obtained Senate confirmation for her, attempted to keep her in the U.S. Attorney’s chair through a series of temporary appointments, and ultimately lost the legal argument that allowed the final workaround. Meanwhile, Trump’s replacement nominee, George Kelesis, has been sitting before the Senate Judiciary Committee since February without receiving a committee vote.
And here’s the summary headline: ”From Senate bypass to court defeat: the long, winding failure to install Sigal Chattah as Trump’s U.S. Attorney in Nevada.”
But the further and most important question is: “Under what authority is Sigal Chattah still sitting in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada serving as First U.S. Attorney – effectively still serving as the head of that office – after all these defeats and rejections by every Congressional and legal entity has completely rejected her?