Major loss

Judge rules Trump can’t fire court-appointed prosecutors

The ruling is a major loss for Trump’s effort to install loyalists in key positions.

By Erica Orden

A federal judge on Thursday ruled that President Donald Trump doesn’t have the power to fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys, rejecting a core tenet of the Trump administration’s approach to top prosecutorial jobs.

“The president cannot unilaterally fire a United States attorney appointed by the district court,” U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian said in a ruling from the bench. Doing so, Bastian said, “would upend the framework created by the Constitution and the statutes, which together balance the president’s right to appoint and the Senate’s right to confirm.”

The Justice Department said it will ask an appeals court to temporarily block Bastian’s decision while it appeals the ruling.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Roger Rogoff, whom Trump purportedly fired from the job of U.S. attorney for the Seattle-area Western District of Washington immediately after the district’s federal judges appointed him to the role in July.

In his ruling, Bastian, an Obama appointee, determined that Rogoff is the U.S. attorney and has legally occupied that role since he took the oath of office on July 15. The judge also stripped power from Charles Neil Floyd, whom the Trump administration had temporarily installed in Rogoff’s place, determining that the administration had “improperly granted” authority to Floyd.

The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to circumvent the Senate confirmation process to appoint loyalists in top positions. In cases when district judges have exercised their authority to select someone else as the U.S. attorney, Trump has fired that person.

In his ruling, Bastian not only restored Rogoff to the job, but also took steps designed to thwart any attempts by the Trump administration to undermine his authority or transfer it to someone else. Bastian ordered that the executive office of the president, Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Justice Department are barred from “any purported firing” or removal of Rogoff from his post, interference with his service in the role and from treating anyone other than Rogoff as the U.S. attorney.