A federal appeals court Wednesday said President Donald Trump can fire a top government watchdog in the latest round of a legal fight over the authority to dismiss federal officials.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., put on hold on a lower court’s ruling that found Hampton Dellinger’s termination at the Office of Special Counsel was “unlawful.” The court said it would expedite its review of the ruling, but in the meantime Dellinger can be removed from his post.
The White House and Dellinger did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday night.
The ruling is a temporary win for Trump as his administration seeks to carry out mass firings of federal workers, including nearly two dozen government watchdog officials.
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Dellinger, who was special counsel of the Office of Special Counsel, filed a lawsuit against several Trump administration officials last month challenging his dismissal. He argued it violated a federal law that says the president can remove special counsels only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
The email outlining his termination did not cite any of the those as the reason for his firing, Dellinger said in his lawsuit.
“That email made no attempt to comply with the Special Counsel’s for-cause removal protection,” the lawsuit says. “It stated simply: ‘On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Special Counsel of the US Office of Special Counsel is terminated, effective immediately.’”
Dellinger began his post in March 2024 after he was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term.
As head of the Office of Special Counsel, Dellinger was tasked with shielding federal employees from prohibited personnel practices, including retaliation for whistleblowing. His office’s work was unrelated to the investigations into Trump led by Jack Smith, whom then-Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed as a special counsel in 2022.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson halted Trump’s effort to remove Dellinger and ordered that he be allowed to serve until the end of his term barring inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. She had allowed Dellinger to remain in his post while the case moved through the courts.
Jackson appeared to agree with Dellinger’s argument that allowing his termination without cause would have a chilling effect among federal workers seeking to lodge complaints through the Office of Special Counsel.
“The Special Counsel’s job is to look into and expose unethical or unlawful practices directed at federal civil servants, and to help ensure that whistleblowers who disclose fraud, waste, and abuse on the part of government agencies can do so without suffering reprisals,” Jackson wrote in her ruling Saturday. “It would be ironic, to say the least, and inimical to the ends furthered by the statute if the Special Counsel himself could be chilled in his work by fear of arbitrary or partisan removal.”
The Justice Department had petitioned the Supreme Court to affirm what it called Trump’s right to fire Dellinger, arguing that anything less would infringe on the president’s power to manage the executive branch “in the earliest days of his Administration.”
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