Special Prosecutor Demands Navajo AG, Private Firm Recuse From ZenniHome Probe

Kyle T. Nayback, the special prosecutor appointed by the Special Division of the Window Rock District Court to investigate a collapsed Navajo Nation housing program, demanded last week that acting Attorney General Kris Beecher and a private law firm retained by the Navajo Nation Department of Justice step aside, asserting they have no authority to run a parallel inquiry into ZenniHome and its contracting partners.

At the center of the dispute is a program that was supposed to deliver homes to some of the most housing-insecure families on the reservation, including chapters across McKinley County. ZenniHome, a Mesa-based modular home manufacturer founded by Bob Worsley, a former Arizona Republican state senator and founder of SkyMall, had been awarded tens of millions of dollars in American Rescue Plan Act funds to build culturally designed prefab homes at a factory on the former Navajo Generating Station site in LeChee, outside Page. The original contract called for 160 homes; it was later reduced to 80. Only 18 structures were ever built, and not one was delivered to a Navajo family before ZenniHome shuttered the factory in July 2025, laying off more than 200 workers.

Nayback told the Navajo Times he took action to halt what he described as an "unauthorized investigation" conducted by Beecher's office and the private firm into ZenniHome and Indigenous Design Studio + Architects, known as IDSA. He cited Navajo Nation Code Title 2, Section 2021(J) as the legal basis for his sole jurisdiction over the matter. The Window Rock District Court named Nayback, an Albuquerque attorney and former federal prosecutor whose firm Nayback Law, LLC is 100 percent Native-owned, as special prosecutor in August 2025 after a preliminary review found sufficient grounds to probe possible illegal conduct tied to the Navajo Nation Executive Branch's contracting decisions.

The recusal demand adds a new layer of friction to an investigation that has already reached into the highest levels of tribal government. Nayback filed an ethics complaint in November 2025 calling for the removal of Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren, alleging nepotism and misuse of public funds between January 2023 and May 2025. Beecher, who served as Nygren's chief of staff before being installed as acting attorney general, is now the fourth person to hold that post in less than a year, a sequence of turnover that tribal council members have noted publicly.

The money at stake remains considerable. The Navajo Nation funneled approximately $24 million in ARPA funds toward the housing effort before President Nygren canceled that initial grant; the tribe then contracted with IDSA for nearly $25 million, which in turn subcontracted ZenniHome for $22 million. In February 2026, IDSA filed a 362-page civil lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court alleging ZenniHome breached its subcontract, misused project funds, and failed to deliver any completed homes. ZenniHome CEO Bob Worsley has said the company "spent every dime" and blamed the tribe for canceling funding and mismanaging the project.

For McKinley County families on Navajo housing waitlists, the recusal dispute is not an abstraction. The Navajo Nation has faced a documented shortage of roughly 30,000 to 40,000 homes for years, and the ARPA-funded program was explicitly designed to address that backlog. Whether Nayback's demand ultimately resolves quietly or produces a formal court ruling, the core question facing families waiting on those lists is practical: who is actively running this investigation right now, and when, if ever, will findings or charges be made public? Neither Beecher's office nor the private firm had issued a public response as of Sunday.