Federal judges in Albany, New York, appointed a new U.S. attorney on Wednesday, exercising a rarely invoked legal authority to appoint top prosecutors in regions without a Senate-confirmed nominee.
Their choice lasted less than five hours on the job.
Donald T. Kinsella, a 79-year-old former prosecutor and registered Republican, was summarily fired via an email from the White House later that evening, Justice Department officials said.
The move underscored a growing point of tension between the Trump administration and courts in parts of the country where the president’s controversial picks for U.S. attorney have been unable to win Senate support.
Kinsella’s swift termination also sent a signal to judges in several other federal court districts, including the Eastern District of Virginia, who have recently announced plans to make similar replacements of Trump-installed prosecutors whose appointments have been deemed invalid by the courts.
“Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, said in a social media post late Wednesday. “See Article II of our Constitution. You are fired, Donald Kinsella.”
Kinsella did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning. And it was not immediately clear whether federal judges in Albany had any recourse to counter the White House’s decision.
When administration officials similarly fired a new U.S. attorney whom federal judges in New Jersey appointed in July to replace Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and pick for the position there, there was little formal response from the courts.
Typically, U.S. attorneys, who wield broad prosecutorial discretion to pursue civil and criminal matters in their districts, are nominated by the president and confirmed or rejected in a Senate vote. But federal law empowers judges to name acting U.S. attorneys when there is no lawfully serving appointee or Senate-confirmed presidential pick serving in the role.
Before his appointment Wednesday, Kinsella had most recently worked as a senior counsel to Albany-based law firm Whiteman Osterman & Hanna. He had served a previous stint in the U.S. attorney’s office in Albany from 1989 to 2002.
The judges named him to lead the office as a replacement for John A. Sarcone III — a Trump loyalist whom the Justice Department appointed to serve in the position on an interim basis in March.
Before his appointment, Sarcone had never worked as a prosecutor and most recently had served as a regional administrator for the General Services Administration.
His tenure as interim U.S. attorney has been marked by a series of controversies, including an incident in June in which he announced a knife-wielding undocumented immigrant from El Salvador had tried to kill him outside an Albany hotel.
Surveillance footage later showed the man did not come close to Sarcone with his weapon, and charges brought by a local prosecutor were downgraded from attempted murder to a misdemeanor.
Sarcone had also launched an investigation over the summer into New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), probing whether her office had violated Trump’s civil rights when it secured a multimillion-dollar fraud judgment against him and his real estate empire in 2024.
As part of a legal challenge from James, a federal judge ruled in January that Sarcone had been serving unlawfully in his position for months well beyond the 120-day limit federal law places on interim U.S. attorney picks.
But like other interim U.S. attorney picks by Trump who have faced similar disqualification rulings in Los Angeles, Nevada, New Mexico and Alexandria, Virginia, Sarcone refused to immediately vacate the job. He continues leading the office.
Until recently, judges in districts like Sarcone’s have been reticent to exercise their authority to appoint prosecutors counter to the Trump administration’s wishes.
Last month, though, the chief federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia announced the courts there would be accepting applications for a U.S. attorney to replace Lindsey Halligan, another former Trump lawyer named interim U.S. attorney only to be later disqualified by the courts. She left her post in January.
The judges in Virginia have not yet named a replacement.
Federal judges in Seattle have similarly been soliciting applications to potentially appoint a new acting U.S. attorney there, after the term of the Trump administration’s interim pick expired this month.
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