SerpApi.Org
A federal prosecutor in Washington State who was axed by President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Tuesday that challenges not just his own firing, but a core tenet of the Trump administration’s approach to top prosecutorial jobs.
The administration fired Roger Rogoff, the top federal prosecutor in the Seattle area, less than an hour after federal judges appointed him to the job — a signal that the White House is once again playing hardball with appointments of top prosecutors around the country.
Since the start of Trump’s second term, his administration has repeatedly sought to circumvent the Senate confirmation process traditionally used to install U.S. attorneys by using other procedural mechanisms to appoint loyalists. When district judges have exercised their authority to select someone else as the U.S. attorney, Trump has fired that person.
That pattern had appeared to come to an end in March, when officials from the Justice Department worked in consultation with federal judges in New Jersey to select a mutually acceptable prosecutor, Robert Frazer, to lead the embattled office. Frazer’s appointment came amid turmoil atop the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office — Trump loyalist Alina Habba was disqualified from the job after an administration gambit to keep her in the role, and an unusual triumvirate of prosecutors ran the office after she stepped down.
At the time of Frazer’s appointment, even Habba appeared to celebrate the coordination between the Trump administration and the judiciary, writing: “One thing should be clear- when judges work with @AGPamBondi and @DAGToddBlanche under @POTUS to collaborate on serving what an overwhelming majority of Americans asked for at the ballots and not attack mindlessly for political gain THINGS GET DONE.”
Such teamwork appears to be no more.
Last week, after more than three years without a Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney in the Seattle-area Western District of Washington, the district’s federal judges unanimously appointed Rogoff, a former federal prosecutor and law professor. The chief judge wrote that Rogoff has “deep ties to the Western District of Washington and has devoted his career to serving its citizens.”
Rogoff was sworn in at 7:40 a.m. that day. Within an hour, he received an email from the White House informing him that Trump had fired him, according to a spokesperson for Rogoff’s lawyer.
Rogoff immediately retained an employment attorney, saying he was “evaluating his legal options.”
He filed suit Tuesday, arguing in his complaint that Trump cannot fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys.
“The President’s actions violate the law, and they ignore the protections of the Constitution of the United States,” Rogoff said in a statement. “His removal of me, like his removal of other court-appointed U.S. Attorneys across the country, is illegal and cannot stand."
His appointment and firing played out during the first day of Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing to be attorney general, and shortly after he left the hearing room, Blanche placed the blame on the judges, accusing them of “abandon[ing] the time-honored process of consultation with the administration so that the selected U.S. Attorney is qualified to serve in the administration.”
“Roger Rogoff has been fired by the President,” he added.
Sen. Patty Murray, (D-Wash.), said Rogoff had been fired “because the President wants a sock puppet who puts Trump above the rule of law.”
