Exclusive-Nevada’s acting US Attorney urged voter fraud probe to help Republicans, document shows

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Nevada’s top federal prosecutor has asked the FBI to investigate debunked Republican claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election, a probe she hopes will influence congressional races and ensnare Democrats, according to a government document seen by Reuters.

In late July, U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah told Justice Department officials she met with federal agents and handed them a thumb drive containing data compiled by Nevada’s Republican Party about people living in the U.S. illegally who cast ballots in the 2020 election and members of Indian tribes who allegedly received cash for ballots, the document shows. She also urged the agents to call the state’s Republican Party attorney.

Chattah said she expects to pursue a variety of investigative lines of inquiry, but legal experts said she has multiple conflicts of interest and should recuse herself from any investigations involving certain legal clients or political matters she was involved with directly. Justice Department guidelines also stipulate that prosecutors cannot initiate a case based on “political association, activities, or beliefs.”

Chattah told senior officials she wants to remove “illegal aliens” from voter rolls which would possibly lead to a “reallocation of census numbers” and affect the race for Nevada’s 4th congressional district seat, currently held by Democratic U.S. Representative Steven Horsford, the document shows.

Chattah said she also wants to exonerate the six Republicans who were prosecuted by Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford for posing as fake electors in a failed bid to keep President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Chattah defended one of the accused and a lower court dismissed the charges. The state appealed the case, which is still pending.

Chattah was sworn in as Nevada’s Interim U.S. Attorney on April 1. A court filing dated April 7 shows Chattah withdrew from the fake elector case. On the dateline above her signature, the 7 is crossed out and replaced with a 1.

Chattah told senior officials she hopes to demonstrate an ongoing conspiracy between the Biden White House and state attorneys general, the document shows. She also called for a takedown of unions and non-profits that operate voter registration drives and a probe into the financing of these “illegal acts” by the Democratic political action committee ActBlue, she added.

Chattah’s investigation is the latest in a string of high-profile criminal cases initiated under Attorney General Pam Bondi targeting Trump’s political foes. Trump has urged Republican-led states to redraw their U.S. House of Representatives districts to protect their majority in next year’s midterm elections.

ETHICS QUESTIONS

Legal experts say her actions potentially violate federal government ethics rules because of her prior work as an attorney representing certain Republican clients and as Nevada’s Republican National Committee chairwoman who also ran unsuccessfully in 2022 for state attorney general against Ford.

Until April, Chattah served as a defense lawyer to one of the fake electors and represented the RNC and Nevada Republican Party in a lawsuit alleging that Nevada failed to maintain clean voter rolls, court records show.

“I think the ethics rule is pretty clear that when she’s in the United States Attorney’s Office, she has to recuse from any particular party matter in which she represented a client or otherwise participated personally and substantially in the private sector,” said Richard Painter, who served as the White House chief ethics officer during Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to answer questions about the probe, and referred Reuters to Chattah’s office.

“The U.S. Attorney’s Office cannot comment on any ongoing investigations nor confirm their existence, but we will always abide by all DOJ ethics rules and policy guidelines, and we will follow only the facts and law in all our investigations,” a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nevada said in a statement.

Reuters could not determine if the FBI had opened an election fraud probe, but Chattah told a local news station less than two weeks later that such a probe was underway. In that interview, she denied being motivated by politics.

An FBI spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

“It is always extremely important that U.S. Attorneys are very careful not to appear to be political in any way, both in the way they supervise investigations and the way they make charging decisions,” said Greg Brower, who served as U.S. Attorney in Nevada under Bush and Democratic President Barack Obama.

Justice Department ethics rules disqualify department attorneys from participating in criminal cases if they have personal or political relationships with any person or organization “substantially involved in the conduct” or who may have a “specific and substantial interest” in the outcome.

Impartiality rules also generally prohibit government lawyers from working for a year on any matter involving a former employer or legal client.

“She is urging the Justice Department to pursue an investigation that she says is going to exonerate her former client,” said Kathleen Clark, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “I believe that action on her part violates the impartiality regulation.”

Chattah, first appointed as Interim U.S. Attorney in late March, faces a legal challenge by federal public defenders who accused the Justice Department of pursuing illegal personnel maneuvers to keep her in power as Acting U.S. Attorney after her temporary appointment expired in July. A federal judge is expected to rule soon.

During the 2020 presidential election, Chattah echoed Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen. In 2021, the Nevada Republican Party tried to present evidence of voter fraud to the state, but the state concluded that most of the complaints related to voter registration records were “inaccurate or suspicious for a variety of reasons.” 

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Scott Malone and David Gregorio)