I’ve been bringing you updates on the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago, the current U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros and the expanding grand jury misconduct corruption scandal enveloping the office. Of course, this is not limited to Chicago. It’s highly likely, though defense attorneys haven’t yet been able to pry free evidence, that the Broadview Six indictment came down under pressure from Washington, whether that was from the White House, Justice Department or the Department of Homeland Security. The deeper corruption of the DOJ is a story me and my colleagues have been reporting on for the last year and a half — cover-ups, retaliation against political adversaries, various flavors of corrupt and criminal conduct.
So it’s everywhere. It’s starts at the top and it trickles down everywhere. But in most cases we’re talking about corruption and misconduct directed from above, from Trump and his top fluffers. But the DOJ is a big, big institution. Lots of people. There are 93 U.S. Attorneys Offices. So there are many flavors of corruption. And I wanted to share with you a slightly different kind. This is courtesy of TPM Reader LS who shared this article from Bloomberg Law (which David also flagged in Morning Memo today). It’s about Sigal Chattah, the acting U.S. Attorney in Nevada’s single U.S. Attorney’s office. It’s a wild, wild article. Totally bonkers stuff I was surprised I hadn’t heard about before. But it kind of makes sense since it’s hard to get attention for wild levels of corruption and misconduct and simply absurd behavior in a semi-out-of-the-way U.S. Attorneys office when we’re seeing examples of the same every day at Main Justice.
Anyway, here’s the story.
As is often the case, Chattah first came to the attention of the MAGA world for her high profile anti-COVID public health policy activism. She was a national committeewoman on the Republican National Committee from 2023 until earlier last year. She has a long record of racist social media posts and calls for violence against her political foes. Unsurprisingly with that record, she was installed as an “acting” U.S. Attorney last year with no confirmation. When that term ran out, federal judges in the district declined to reinstall her, as they’re able to do. (That actually did happen with Andrew Boutros in Chicago. The judges reappointed him on their own. They seemed to reason that with Trump they could do a lot worse than Boutros.) That should have been the end of Chattah’s run leading the Nevada office. But she appealed their decision, so she’s still in place. For good measure, Chattah accused both Nevada senators of public corruption after they said they would block any attempts to nominate her as permanent U.S. Attorney.
It’s hard to capture the full chaos and craziness of this article. Some parts are just weirdy and Trumpy. Her introductory memo to office staff declared her goal of making the Nevada U.S. Attorney’s office the “sexiest” place to prosecute in the U.S. But the gist is that Chattah is not only full MAGA in the generic sense (she recently invited judicial fascism activist and Trump advisor Mike Davis to the office and he then went on Steve Bannon’s podcast and toasted her as “the warrior queen out in Nevada.”) She’s also full MAGA in her approach to public power. Being a “sexy” place to prosecute appears to mean prosecuting foes and letting pals off the hook. Her entire tenure in the office seems to have been a matter of getting cases dropped against her friends and friends of her friends and starting cases against her foes.
What makes her stand out is that all or almost all of the bad acts are tied to her personal grievances and connections. In other words, she doesn’t seem to be targeting Trump’s enemies or taking orders from Main Justice. They’re all her own pet grievances and enemies. She’s the King (or Queen, I guess) of the Nevada U.S. Attorneys office in the way Trump thinks he’s the King of America and owns the country. As the U.S. Attorney under the first President Bush, Rick Pocker put it — in what I hope was strategic understatement — “I don’t think she quite understands how you’re not supposed to use that office for personal or political purposes.” In fact, she appears to have routinely disregarded instructions from Main Justice to recuse herself from cases. That gives you a sense of the kind of character we’re talking about. The Bondi/Blanche DOJ has repeatedly said, don’t do this unethical and/or corrupt thing, and she’s just disregarded it and kept being her best corrupt self.
The most glaring example is that as soon as she got control of the office she started sic’ing investigators on the state’s attorney general Aaron Ford (D), who defeated her for the job in 2022. Relatedly, Chattah appears to be super racist. During their 2022 battle, a leaked text from Chattah said Ford, who is Black, “should be hanging from a fucking crane.” She also falsely claimed at a rally in 2022 that Ford was a “convicted criminal”, which is false. Ford is now the leading candidate to be the state’s next governor and Chattah’s “investigation” continues. Chattah also forced out an assistant U.S. Attorney named Thomas Colonna after he allegedly refused to go easy on her 2022 political consultant and campaign donor George Harris. An attorney in the office quoted in Colonna’s whistleblower complaint stated, “There has been a growing concern amongst civil and criminal AUSAs about USA Chattah’s interest in resolving cases in matters involving her associates.”
The article has example after example of her shutting down cases or standing them based on who she likes and doesn’t. But maybe the most damning thing is that reporter Ben Penn was able to get a long list of prominent Nevada lawyers, a history professor, a former Republican U.S. Attorney, the former head of the state bar’s disciplinary committee, a former DOJ professional ethics official and others to go on the record saying she’s wildly corrupt and should be removed from office. Technically, of course, she already has been (by the judges in her district). She just refused to leave. The assistant U.S. Attorneys working under her apparently assured she would not personally interfere with cases while her removal is being appealed. But she continued to do so. It’s not surprising that these folks think this. But even in the Trump era — maybe particularly in the Trump era given all the drummed up prosecutions — it takes a lot for people like this to say these things on the record.
Let me conclude by reminding you. I know there are more, many more cases like this around the country. If you know things — either an article you can send me or inside dope you know from the inside — please let me know. What interested me about this is the way it illustrates a different side of Trump-era corruption. There’s the way Todd Blanche and Trump and other top White House advisors are using U.S. Attorneys offices around the country as partisan bludgeons. But you have these other cases where they’ve just reveled in putting MAGA-loved hacks in charge of less prominent offices as political patronage gifts and for the pure pleasure of disruption and performative misconduct.
There are many more of these stories. We want to know about them. If you know of one, tell us.