By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration has extended Nevada’s Interim U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah’s term, aiming to prevent a federal court from rejecting her permanent appointment amid mounting opposition from critics including more than 100 retired federal and state judges, a Justice Department official said.
Chattah, an Israel-born former Republican National Committeewoman, has been serving in the interim role since April.
The 120-day deadline for her term is set to expire on Tuesday, which would open the door for the federal court in Nevada to appoint a U.S. Attorney since Trump has yet to nominate anyone for the role.
The department designated Chattah Acting U.S. Attorney for Nevada under the federal Vacancies Reform Act, the department official said.
Chattah announced her new role on X on Tuesday, adding “Rinse and repeat: The law is the ONLY thing that makes ALL people equal.”
Federal courts have so far rejected two of Trump’s other U.S. Attorney picks: John Sarcone in the Northern District of New York and Trump’s former personal lawyer Alina Habba in New Jersey.
In both of those cases, the Justice Department used a variety of different legal maneuvers to keep them in place.
In Habba’s case, Attorney General Pam Bondi thwarted the federal court by removing Desiree Grace, Habba’s first assistant whom the courts had chosen to serve as the state’s top federal prosecutor.
The maneuver in New Jersey has injected some uncertainty into federal criminal cases there, and defendants in at least one case have asked that their charges be dismissed based on an argument that Habba’s appointment was unlawful.
More than 100 retired federal and state judges this week urged the federal court in Nevada not to permanently appoint Chattah, citing her history of racially charged comments and her “extreme partisan bias,” according to a letter seen by Reuters.
“Chattah has frequently used violence-tinged language suggesting that her political opponent should be hanging from a crane, that protesters should be shot, and that people should ‘buy ammo’ in response to their grievances,” wrote the 116 retired judges in a Monday letter to Andrew Gordon, the chief federal judge in Nevada.
The letter listed examples including Chattah referring to former Democratic U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman as an “antisemitic ghetto rat” and calling Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis “so ghetto” and asking: “Why do we have lawyers like this who litigate in Ebonics?”
She also previously suggested that certain Democratic Jewish members of the U.S. Congress are equivalent to modern-day Nazi collaborators.
A Justice Department official did not have any immediate comment about the letter criticizing Chattah.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Additional reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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