OPINION: By SA Barket
Sigal Chattah was named interim US Attorney for the District of Nevada and officially was sworn in to that interim appointment on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 — April Fools Day.
Call me fooled.
I received information about a dinner that was to be held just about a week after her interim appointment, on Monday, April 7, 2025 at Nicco’s Prime Cuts & Fresh Fish, a steakhouse in the Durango Casino and Resort. (See invitation above.)
The event was billed as a “Dinner Celebration Honoring SIGAL CHATTAH, Interim US Attorney for the District of Nevada.” And as “an evening of great company, fine dining, and well-deserved recognition.”
Well, as the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live was fond of saying, “Isn’t that special.”
Call me fooled because the event never took place. I heard it was called off for a couple reasons:
- because the organizing group had gotten tepid responses for the $200 per plate dinner — seems as though there were not very many takers; and
- because of the appearance of this event being an ill-conceived fund-raising event
Oops.
Even though the invite stated on the very bottom line: “This is not a fundraiser for Sigal Chattah or her office.” OK. If you say so.
I’m calling out this as a double tone-deaf Sigal Chattah entanglement. The two reasons?
- The interim appointment of Sigal Chattah to be US Attorney for the District of Nevada will go down in the annals of political tone-deafness as perhaps the worst call so far by the Trump administration’s DOJ (yes, we’re looking at you Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel); and
- How could you actually believe that anyone would think this was anything other than a fund-raising event, regardless of however it was labeled? I’m not sure whether it’s legal or illegal to do that, but it certainly is tasteless and crass at the very least.
(Yay! Hey, let’s have a $200 a plate dinner for someone who’s only an interim appointment to a federal office, and if they make it to a confirmation hearing will face withering opposition likely from both Democrats and Republicans. Just look around this website.)
But then, that’s Sigal Chattah for you — tasteless and crass (in my opinion).
The organizer of this non-event dinner was the Israeli-American Civic Action Network (ICAN) under the umbrella group known as IsraelUSA. (As a side note, I must say that I fully support this organization, being a Lebanese-Jew myself.)
Sigal Chattah was born in Israel and left there as a young teenager to come with her family to America. She’s been a pretty staunch advocate for Israel for her entire career. ICAN has supported Chattah’s interim appointment, even though she sent out a text that her Democratic opponent in her failed 2022 bid to become the next Nevada Attorney General should be, in her estimation, “… hanging from a f – – – ing crane.” Her opponent, the Democratic AG Aaron Ford, is a black man.
Again, my opinion: See what I mean about tasteless and crass?