Fired 54 Minutes After Being Sworn In, Seattle's U.S. Attorney Sues Trump to Get His Job Back
Roger Rogoff, unanimously appointed by a panel of federal judges, says his near-instant removal by the White House violated federal law and the Constitution's Appointments Clause.
SEATTLE — Roger Rogoff held the title of United States attorney for the Western District of Washington for less than an hour. Now he is suing President Donald Trump to get it back.
Rogoff, a former state judge and veteran federal prosecutor, was sworn in last Wednesday after a panel of federal district judges unanimously voted to appoint him to the post, a mechanism Congress created to fill U.S. attorney vacancies when the president has not installed a Senate-confirmed nominee. Within roughly 54 minutes of taking the oath, according to his complaint, he received an email informing him that Trump had ordered his termination.
In a lawsuit filed this week in federal district court in Seattle, Rogoff argues that his removal violated both a federal statute governing U.S. attorney vacancies and the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. He is asking the court to void the firing and to declare that he remains the lawful U.S. attorney for the district until the president nominates, and the Senate confirms, a successor. He is believed to be the first of several judicially appointed U.S. attorneys ousted by the administration to challenge his removal in court.
The Justice Department pushed back sharply. "The district court did not coordinate with DOJ on this selection," a department spokesperson said, adding that "consistent with other firings of this type, this is wholly within the President's authority." The dispute cuts to a contested question of executive power: whether a president may summarily fire a prosecutor that judges — not the White House — placed in office.
The case is the latest flashpoint in a broader confrontation between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary over control of the nation's top prosecutors. In several districts where Senate confirmation has stalled, judges have stepped in to appoint interim U.S. attorneys, only to see the administration remove them and install its own picks. Legal scholars say Rogoff's suit could force courts to clarify the limits of the president's removal power over officials the judiciary appointed.
For Rogoff, the stakes are also personal. He gave up a seat on the bench and a stable career to take the prosecutor's job, and his allies argue the abrupt firing sends a chilling message to any lawyer weighing public service. A ruling in his favor would reinstate him; a loss would cement the White House's authority to clear out judicially appointed prosecutors at will.
The mechanism at the heart of the dispute is not new. Federal law allows the district court to appoint a U.S. attorney when an interim appointee's 120-day term expires without a Senate-confirmed replacement — a safeguard meant to keep prosecutors' offices staffed during political gridlock. What is unusual, legal observers say, is the collision between that judicial backstop and a president determined to control who leads the offices that bring federal criminal cases. The Seattle case may become an early test of how courts referee that clash.
Originally reported by CNN.