The parade of Trump terribles is a long one, starting in Washington and stretching clear across this beleaguered nation.
A bumbling Defense secretary who lacks the competence to organize a two-car military procession.
A screw-loose Health secretary who seems not to care if measles and other plagues descend on America.
A director of national intelligence who’s shown no great abundance of that quality but, rather, an eagerness to twist and bend facts like a coat hanger, serving whatever cockamamie claim the president burps up.
Because, after all, obeisance and lay-down-your-life loyalty are the main prerequisites for service in the Trump administration, along with the all-important consideration of how one comes across on television.
How else to explain the chief federal prosecutor he’s imposed on Nevada, Sigal Chattah?
Chattah, 50, devoted years to a not-particularly-noteworthy legal career, practicing domestic and international law at her Las Vegas firm and teaching political science for a time at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 2022, Chattah was the Republican nominee for state attorney general, losing rather handily to incumbent Democrat Aaron Ford.
But not before distinguishing herself as a notably reprehensible candidate.
Among other things, Chattah compared Ford to the leader of Hamas and said that her opponent, who happens to be Black, “should be hanging from a f— crane.” (The Israeli-born Chattah told the Las Vegas Review Journal the “smart-ass comment” was a tongue-in-cheek expression derived from her Middle East background.)
A pugnacious poster on social media — another perceived asset in Trump World — Chattah called a Black member of Congress a “hood rat,” a Black female prosecutor “ghetto” and a Black “Saturday Night Live” cast member a “monkey.”
She suggested immigrants — make that “invaders” — and college protesters should be shot and transgenderism should be treated with “meds or commitment to an in-patient facility.”
But what might have particularly endeared her to Trump is her embrace of his ego-salving Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen from under him. Chattah even served as legal counsel to one of the fake electors who tried to overturn Joe Biden’s clear-cut victory and swipe Nevada for Trump.
It’s hardly unusual for a president to pick a member of his party to serve as U.S. attorney, replacing the choice of a previous administration. In fact, even though justice is supposed to be blind and thus, theoretically above political considerations, that’s how the selection process usually works.
But Trump has broken new and treacherous ground by installing not just partisans as federal prosecutors but lackeys — starting with Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi — who’ve shown their allegiance not to fair-minded application of the law but rather delivering on the feral impulses of their White House patron.
Trump’s pick for top prosecutor in the Los Angeles area is Bill Essayli, a former state assemblyman from Riverside County whose main qualification seemed to be his loud, performative approach to serving in Sacramento’s GOP minority.
Bondi appointed Essayli on an interim basis in early April. His appointment was limited to 120 days; normally within that time he would have been formally nominated and faced confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Knowing the latter was unlikely, the Trump administration executed an end run and named Essayli “acting U.S. attorney,” which gives him an additional 210 days in the job before he faces formal confirmation.
As it happened, the very same day that maneuvering took place, prosecutors moved to dismiss charges in a criminal case involving one of Trump’s political donors.
Coincidence?
The same sleight-of-hand — interim appointment, designation as “acting U.S. attorney” — was used to extend the tenure of Trump sycophants as chief federal prosecutors in New Jersey, New Mexico, upstate New York and, in Chattah’s case, Nevada.
(In a setback for Trump, a federal judge ruled last week that his former personal attorney, Alina Habba, was unlawfully serving as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, though the order was put on hold pending appeal.)
Chattah’s partisanship is plain as a desert squall. In a remarkable breach of protocol and ethics — not to mention the federal law forbidding employees from mixing work and politics — she kept her position as Nevada’s representative on the Republican National Committee even as she served as interim U.S. attorney.
Chattah abandoned the post only after the Nevada Independent reported on the obvious conflict of interest.
Last month, in the final days before Chattah’s interim appointment ended, more than 100 retired state and federal judges wrote Nevada’s chief federal district judge to object to her continued service. The group said Chattah’s history of “racially charged, violence-tinged, and inflammatory public statements” was disqualifying.
The Trump administration extended her tenure nonetheless.
As part of their unavailing effort, the judges quoted a 1940 speech then-U.S. Atty. Gen. Robert H. Jackson delivered, citing the immense power and responsibility that rests with a U.S. attorney.
“The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous,” said Jackson, who went on to serve as one of the Supreme Court’s most distinguished justices. “… The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial.
“While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”
Obviously, Jackson never knew Chattah or other Trump appointees besmirching the halls of justice. But the late justice, buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Frewsburg, N.Y., is doubtless turning somersaults in his grave.
