All of the federal prosecutors based in the Reno branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for Nevada have left in the past year, meaning Las Vegas-based attorneys are responsible for prosecuting cases for the entire state, The Nevada Independent has learned.

The Reno office — which handles prosecutions for cases originating in Northern Nevada and many rural counties — typically has between five and six full-time attorneys overseeing prosecutions, according to interviews with several lawyers and a review of federal case data.

But in the past year, the number of employees has dwindled from six to zero. The lawyers either left, retired or moved to another Justice Department office. They did not respond to The Nevada Independent's requests for explanations on their departures.

The Justice Department said in a statement that all vacant jobs will be filled. It had a job posting for a single attorney position in the Reno office that expired in June.

As a result, Las Vegas-based lawyers have to fly in to prosecute cases originating in Northern Nevada, multiple employees at Reno's federal building told The Indy. Former officials said in interviews that this dynamic will make collaboration with Northern Nevada law enforcement officials harder. 

"It's a very serious issue," said Greg Brower, a former U.S. attorney for Nevada appointed by President George W. Bush. "I'm not sure how this is going to work."

It's part of a trend that The New York Times called a "striking exodus" of federal government lawyers under President Donald Trump. In response to the Times' reporting, Sigal Chattah, the top federal prosecutor in Nevada and ally of Trump, said "it took me a grueling year to exorcise the District of Nevada. Dead weight be gone." Trump also said in a Truth Social post that the lawyers leaving the government are "Radical Left Deep State Lunatics."

In a statement to The Indy, Chattah said the Trump administration "inherited offices around the country with prosecutors who failed to meet the minimum standard of prosecuting offenses to keep our communities safe." 

"Those [lawyers] who were and continue to be incapable of protecting our communities from violent criminals through aggressive prosecutions have no place in the Department of Justice," the statement read.

Chattah added that Nevada's U.S. attorney's office previously had "abysmal charging data" — which shows the number of indictments from the Reno office has been on a yearslong downward trend — that "is precisely why a complete overhaul for the Reno office was necessary and continues presently."

The Reno-based lawyers who left had worked for the federal government for more than 65 years combined, according to an Indy analysis of federal court data. 

Of the five lawyers who left the Reno office with publicly available voter registration information, only one was a Democrat.

Chattah, whose continued leadership of the office without receiving Senate confirmation is being challenged in court,  has faced scrutiny for reportedly using the powers of her office to investigate political rivals and boost Republicans. In June, Bloomberg reported that she sought investigations at the behest of friends and former clients and that she opened a probe in part to target Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford (D), who beat Chattah in his 2022 bid for re-election.

Chattah also asked the FBI to investigate alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election with the hopes of giving Republicans a better shot at flipping a congressional seat., Reuters reported. But the probe was closed after finding evidence that only 38 noncitizens may have illegally voted in the election.

A nationwide trend

The Justice Department acknowledged earlier this year that it had lost about 1,000 assistant U.S. attorneys under Trump's second term, the Associated Press reported.

To fill the gaps, agency officials have taken steps to loosen hiring restrictions that longtime observers have called unprecedented, such as when a former agency official asked people to message him on X if they "are a lawyer, are interested in being an [assistant U.S. attorney], and support President Trump and anti-crime agenda." 

In the Reno office, people who left included newer attorneys.

"I worry a lot about losing this generation of prosecutorial knowledge," Deborah Pearlstein, the director of Princeton University's law and public policy program, said in an interview.

Pearlstein, who has criticized a Justice Department effort to loosen internal ethics investigations, also said there is a shift in how the public views these jobs.

"Jobs at the Department of Justice … have certainly during my lifetime been viewed as among the most competitive, among the most sought after, among the most desirable jobs for attorneys," Pearlstein said. "And that is gone."

At the same time, judges have become increasingly wary of statements from government lawyers. Just Security, an online law and policy journal, has documented 135 times when a judge expressed distrust of a government official and their representations, though none of those were in Nevada.

"For generations, courts have viewed statements that the Justice Department and its attorneys make in court as presumptively true because the government is viewed as a trustworthy source of information," Pearlstein said. "That presumption … has just collapsed."

Slowing indictments up north

Assistant U.S. attorneys are the point people for prosecuting federal crimes in the Northern Nevada area, covering everything from human trafficking to fraud. They work with federal law enforcement partners in the region to investigate cases and seek indictments.

In the past year, the Reno office has secured indictments on everything from a surgeon who allegedly falsified medical records to a woman who prosecutors say embezzled $400,000 in federal grant funds.

But so far this year, the number of indictments the office secured has dropped significantly.

"Nevada is still a growing state, and the criminals haven't stopped doing crime," Brower said. "So I'm not sure how to make sense of that."

However, it's part of a yearslong decline in Reno indictments that spans multiple presidential administrations.  

Chattah said in a statement that the number of indictments in the years leading up to her appointment was "abysmal."

Meanwhile, the number of indictments in Las Vegas has stayed more consistent over the years.

Representation in Northern Nevada

Multiple officials who used to work in the U.S. attorney's office said it is important for attorneys to be based in their region.

Typically, lawyers in the Reno office work closely with the region's federal law enforcement agencies, but that will be tested if the cases are being overseen by Las Vegas-based lawyers.

"It's a very close working relationship between the agents and the [lawyers], which is obviously made easier and more effective if everybody's in the same city," Brower said.

The Reno office is located in the city's federal building, which also houses federal courtrooms and U.S. senator offices. When Brower was there, the U.S. attorney's office was a few blocks away, and he said that even that distance was an impediment to his office's work.

"I didn't like the fact that we were all of a block away," he said. "I can't imagine how it's going to work to be a flight away all the way down in Las Vegas."

Plus, the officials said it is important to conduct consistent outreach with rural and tribal groups.

"When you don't even have a U.S. attorney's office in Reno, that doesn't help in that regard," Brower said. "That's unfortunate."