A federal judge ordered the Justice Department on Thursday to provisionally reinstate the judicially appointed U.S. attorney in Seattle, who was fired this summer amid a larger dispute over the president’s authority to fill key prosecutorial posts with candidates of his choosing.
The ruling, by U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian, is the latest in a string of court decisions to conclude that the Trump administration has illegally maneuvered to install loyalists in U.S. attorney roles across the country, while bypassing the role the Senate and courts are also supposed to play in that process. The fight is likely to end up before the Supreme Court.
The suit before Bastian on Thursday involved Roger Rogoff, a veteran prosecutor and former King County Superior Court judge. In July, federal judges in the Western District of Washington chose Rogoff to lead the U.S. attorney’s office for the 19-county region surrounding Seattle. Administration officials fired him via email less than an hour after his appointment.
Bastian granted a preliminary injunction temporarily halting Rogoff’s dismissal and ousting, for now, Charles Neil Floyd, the man the Trump administration had hoped to keep in the post in his place.
The decision leaves Rogoff in a potentially awkward situation, working for a Justice Department that is on the record as opposing his presence.
A department spokesperson said officials disagreed with Thursday’s decision and would seek an immediate stay and appeal. Attorneys for Rogoff declined to comment after the ruling.
Bastian, an appointee of President Barack Obama, rejected a Justice Department request to pause his ruling while that appeal plays out. He further barred department officials from seeking to block Rogoff’s access to his office and from recognizing anyone besides Rogoff as the region’s chief law enforcement officer.
U.S. attorneys, who are the chief federal prosecutors in the nation’s 94 judicial districts, wield broad discretion to pursue criminal and civil matters in their jurisdictions. Typically, they are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate.
But as some of Trump’s U.S. attorney nominees have faced opposition in Congress, the president and the Justice Department have resorted to unorthodox moves to keep the candidates of their choice in place.
The president has asserted broad authority to select whom he wants to fill key executive branch positions, although the courts, in rulings over the past year, have disqualified many of the prosecutors he has sought to install temporarily in U.S. attorney positions.
Several U.S. attorney’s offices across the country — including those in Los Angeles; Nevada; and Albany, New York — are now led by prosecutors whom the Justice Department first installed as interim U.S. attorneys, a job capped by a four-month term limit.
When expiration dates for jobs came and went, the department reappointed many of them as the No. 2 officials in their offices while leaving the top jobs empty, effectively allowing them to remain the top federal prosecutors in their regions.
Such was the case in Seattle, when Floyd, a former immigration judge whom the Justice Department appointed as interim U.S. attorney in October, saw his temporary term lapse earlier this year. Department officials named him first assistant U.S. attorney and left the top job vacant, arguing it made Floyd the de facto leader of the office.
But federal law empowers a region’s judges to make their own U.S. attorney appointment when there is a long-term vacancy in the role. And with no one officially filling the position, they opted to appoint Rogoff instead.
The White House dismissed Rogoff before the hour was out. “District court judges can appoint a U.S. attorney [but] POTUS can fire them,” then-acting attorney general Todd Blanche posted to social media that evening, using shorthand for “president of the United States.”
Rogoff, in his suit, contended that because he was appointed by the courts, there were only two legal ways to remove him: Either the judges who selected him could opt to fire him, or the president could formally nominate a replacement who wins Senate confirmation.
The Justice Department, in response, maintained that the president has the ultimate authority to fire all executive branch appointees, including U.S. attorneys.
Separately, the administration has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear an appeal over Trump’s authority to keep interim U.S. attorney appointees like Floyd in their roles beyond the time limits imposed by the law. The high court has not yet indicated whether it will hear the case.
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