Federal public defenders in Nevada and California filed challenges this week seeking to overturn the appointments of the acting U.S. attorneys in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, who have been serving in their roles without the approval of Congress.
The moves are the latest challenge to the Trump administration’s attempts to install political allies as federal prosecutors, in several cases circumventing established rules for such appointments. The new motion follows a ruling by a federal judge last week that found that Alina Habba, one of the president’s former personal lawyers, had been serving as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney without legal authority for more than a month. That decision has been appealed.
The motions contest the reappointments of two Trump allies: Bill A. Essayli, the acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, and Sigal Chattah, the acting U.S. attorney in Nevada. Motions were filed earlier this week on behalf of defendants in three criminal cases pending in Nevada and on Friday in a case in California.
“Ms. Chattah is improperly serving as a non-confirmed U.S. attorney at least thrice over,” said one of the Nevada filings, which raised a number of potential legal problems with her appointment. The filing said the court “should disqualify Ms. Chattah from this prosecution, as well as attorneys operating under her direction.”
The filing in Los Angeles asserts that fMr. Essayli is, among other things, ”statutorily ineligible” to continue serving on an acting basis. It said that the court should “disqualify Mr. Essayli and any attorneys working under his supervision from participating in criminal prosecutions in this district.”
Both public defender offices bringing the challenges declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mr. Essayli Ms. Chattah’s office has not responded to requests for comment.
Senior federal prosecutors typically require approval by the U.S. Senate. But Mr. Essayli and Ms. Chattah were among several prosecutors who were appointed on an interim basis earlier this year and then reappointed with new “acting” titles once their 120-day terms expired, effectively bypassing Senate confirmation.
Mr. Essayli, a former state assemblyman who once worked as an assistant U.S. attorney, is a Trump ally who has been far more outspoken on political issues than have many of his predecessors. In recent social media posts, he has criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, both Democrats. In an appearance on Fox News, he said that many state lawmakers appear to have “a disease in the mind” and “want soft-on-crime policies.”
He ramped up an investigation of California high school sports after a transgender girl qualified for three events at the upcoming state track and field championships.
And he has played a high-profile role in the administration’s response to protests surrounding immigration raids in the Los Angeles area. In June, after a prominent union leader was injured during an arrest while protesting the raids, Mr. Essayli said, “I don’t care who you are — if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted.”
Shortly before his interim term concluded, Mr. Essayli said in an interview with Glenn Beck, the conservative pundit, that he and his office had “some tricks up our sleeves.”
The new California filing cites that exchange, adding that Mr. Essayli’s reappointment as an acting U.S. attorney, without going through the Senate confirmation process, “was a trick because it circumvented limitations that Congress has imposed on temporary service in important federal offices like U.S. attorney.”
Ms. Chattah, who was born in Israel and came to the United States as a teenager, has also represented the Nevada Republican Party as a lawyer and was its unsuccessful candidate for attorney general in 2022.
She once said that Nevada’s state attorney general, Aaron Ford, should be “hanging” from a crane. Mr. Ford, who is Black, later responded that “threatening to lynch someone, especially a Black person, is racist.” She has also referred to the former New York Representative, Jamaal Bowman, as an “antisemitic ghetto rat.”
The appointment of political allies as top federal prosecutors could have wide-ranging effects.
The Trump administration has used the Justice Department and other agencies to target a number of the president’s antagonists with criminal investigations, including Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, and Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California.
Mr. Trump said this week that he wants George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor, prosecuted on racketeering charges. In recent months he also signed a memorandum ordering an investigation into the Biden administration. He also shared on social media a fake video that appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence showing himself reacting with glee to former President Barack Obama’s arrest by federal agents.
Danny Hakim is a reporter on the Investigations team at The Times, focused primarily on politics.
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