Dem
47
GOP
53
U.S. attorneys must be approved by the Senate, and sometimes Donald Trump wants to appoint a U.S. attorney who is so unqualified that he realizes the Senate might not play ball. This leads him to resort to trickery to make an appointment, but the courts aren't easily fooled. He appointed his former personal attorney, Alina Habba, as temporary U.S. attorney for New Jersey in April. She served the maximum 120 days for a temporary appointment. Meanwhile, the Senate had not confirmed her permanently, possibly because she had no prosecutorial experience at all and was fully prepared to just go after his political enemies. Even for the cowards in the Senate, sometimes Trump pushes the envelope too far. Trump tried a trick to give her more time, but the judge ruled that she was not the lawful U.S. attorney after July 1, meaning all the documents she signed after that date were invalid.
So what did Trump learn from this incident? Nothing. He tried it again, this time in Nevada, with the same result. In March, Trump appointed Sigal Chattah interim U.S. attorney for Nevada. Just before the 120-day time limit was about to kick in, Trump tried another trick to let her continue as acting U.S. attorney. The law specifies that when a U.S. attorney's position is vacant, the first assistant U.S. attorney automatically becomes the acting U.S. attorney. So Trump had AG Pam Bondi appoint Chattah as first assistant U.S. attorney. Four criminals sued claiming Chattah's actions in their cases didn't count because she was not a duly appointed U.S. attorney.
On Tuesday. U.S. District judge David Campbell, a George W. Bush appointee who was confirmed by the Senate 92-0, ruled that the purpose of the law was to prevent precisely this kind of shenanigans, since the first assistant is almost always a career prosecutor and not a political appointee. Basically, the same result as in Habba's case, although the nature of the trick was slightly different in the two cases.
Why didn't the Senate simply confirm Chattah? Maybe because over 100 federal and state judges wrote this letter strongly opposing her confirmation. Why? Maybe it was because in her 2022 campaign for Nevada AG she said her opponent, Aaron Ford, who is Black, "should be hanging from a f**king crane." Perhaps it was her social media posts saying that Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, who is also Black, is "so ghetto." Of course it could have been her comparison of Jewish members of Congress to Nazi collaborators. Maybe all of this and more. In any case, Nevada does not yet have a properly confirmed U.S. Attorney.
As noted above, Campbell was appointed by George W. Bush yet was confirmed by the Senate with no dissenting votes. He is a conservative, but perfectly competent. But Trump doesn't want U.S. Attorneys whose loyalty is to the Constitution. He wants U.S. Attorneys whose only loyalty is to him, and who will prosecute people he orders them to prosecute, whether or not they have committed a crime. These nominees tend not to sit well with the Senate. (V)