A Seattle U.S. attorney who was fired less than an hour after his judicial appointment is suing the Trump administration.
The Department of Justice reportedly fired Roger Rogoff via email only 54 minutes after he was unanimously appointed by federal judges in the Western District of Washington. President Donald Trump had left the district’s U.S. attorney seat vacant, leading judges to fill it themselves with Rogoff.
Rogoff filed his lawsuit on Tuesday, July 21, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, where he was briefly the top DOJ official. The lawsuit alleges that Trump broke the law by firing him without appointing a Senate-confirmed successor.
“The President usurped Congress’s constitutional role in deciding how inferior officers are appointed,” the lawsuit reads, adding that firing at will would “write the Senate out of the U.S. Attorney confirmation process entirely.”
The lawsuit argued the firing clears the Supreme Court’s high bar for irreparable harm, which is a “genuinely extraordinary situation.” It warned that by letting it slide, “A President would never need to submit a nominee to the Senate if he could fire any interim official appointed by the court” under federal law.
As evidence that Rogoff was wrongly fired, the lawsuit brings up a social media post by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche reading, “These candidates do not have the support of POTUS, and I expect they will suffer the same fate as others have when judges ignore Article II,” which establishes executive power in the Constitution.
“Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does,” another cited Blanche post read.
“Even before the Court appointed Rogoff, Defendants appeared committed to firing whomever the Court appointed,” the lawsuit argued.
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