An Obama-appointed judge blocked President Trump from removing a court-picked U.S. attorney in Washington, a move the White House calls an attack on presidential authority.
U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian issued a preliminary injunction reinstating Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington and ordered the Justice Department to treat him as the rightful officeholder. The order bars the Trump administration from treating Rogoff as having been lawfully removed and restores his ability to serve.
Fox News Digital reported that the fight centers on a basic constitutional question: whether a president can fire a U.S. attorney who was put in place by federal judges rather than by presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. The White House and outside legal critics say the answer is yes, and that decades of authority already say so.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis framed the ruling as another judicial effort to box in the elected executive.
"This is yet another ruling from an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump’s agenda and undermine his constitutional authority. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President,"
Bis said.
The Justice Department’s Rapid Response account said the department disagrees with the decision, intends to seek an immediate stay, and will appeal.
Rogoff holds the Western District of Washington post as a court-appointed U.S. attorney. The administration moved to remove him. Bastian, first nominated by President Barack Obama in 2013, then stepped in with the injunction that put Rogoff back in place and ordered the Justice Department to recognize him.
That sets up a direct collision over who runs federal prosecution offices. U.S. attorneys are executive-branch officers. Presidents nominate them. The Senate confirms them. And they carry out the enforcement priorities of the administration in power.
When judges appoint a temporary or interim prosecutor and then try to lock that person in against the president’s will, the separation of powers is no longer a seminar topic. It is the case.
Mike Davis, founder and president of Article III, put the stakes in blunt terms after the order landed.
"Democrat judges handpicked their own U.S. attorney. The President, through his attorney general, fired him. Under Article II of the Constitution, the President clearly has the executive power to fire Justice Department officials,"
Davis wrote. He added that Bastian had created an unnecessary constitutional crisis by ordering the removal of the president’s pick and installing what Davis called the judge’s preferred replacement, and said the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court would have to fix it.
Jeff Clark, litigation vice president at the Oversight Project, said the removal power must remain unfettered under Article II.
"The President's power to remove U.S. Attorneys must be unfettered consistent with Article II of the Constitution. Judge Stanley Bastian is wrong here to order Rogoff reinstated. I predict Judge Bastian will eventually be reversed, whether at the Ninth Circuit or by the Supreme Court,"
Clark said.
Brian Nieves, a partner at Holtzman Vogel, called it judicial overreach and said the judiciary does not get to run the executive branch.
The legal backdrop is not a blank slate. In 1926, the Supreme Court held in Myers v. United States that the president generally has constitutional authority to remove executive-branch officers. That case grew out of President Woodrow Wilson’s firing of a postmaster without Senate consent.
In 1979, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the president’s statutory authority to remove “each United States attorney” also reaches prosecutors appointed by federal judges.
In 2000, a federal appeals court reached the same bottom line: the president has authority to fire a U.S. attorney appointed by federal judges.
Those authorities do not erase every statutory wrinkle in modern interim-appointment practice. They do show a long, consistent through-line. The executive power to remove top federal prosecutors is not a novel Trump theory. It is settled architecture that earlier administrations and courts recognized.
Bastian’s injunction runs against that grain. It treats a court-appointed prosecutor as insulated from the president who is constitutionally charged with taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is the core of the fight now headed for a stay request and an appeal.
Similar disputes have already flared over Trump U.S. attorney appointments and interim arrangements in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York.
In New Jersey, the administration sought to keep Alina Habba leading the U.S. attorney’s office after her interim term ended. Federal courts rejected that effort. Desiree Grace, the judges’ original appointee in that dispute, did not simply take over the office afterward. The pattern is familiar: judicial involvement in who holds these offices, followed by litigation when the elected executive tries to reassert control.
The Western District of Washington order fits the same mold. Judges install or prefer one prosecutor. The president, acting through the attorney general and the Justice Department, moves to remove that person. A district judge then freezes the removal and orders the department to treat the court-favored prosecutor as the rightful officeholder.
Critics say that turns the judiciary into a personnel office for the executive branch. Supporters of the injunction cast it as ordinary enforcement of appointment statutes. The White House rejects that framing and says U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president.
Social media chatter seized on a smaller detail: Bastian’s first name appeared misspelled in the order, dropping the “e” in Stanley. An unnamed user mocked the quality of the legal work. Davis also noted the misspelling while hammering the substance of the ruling.
A clerical error does not decide a constitutional case. The removal power does. And the removal power is what the administration is now taking up the ladder.
The Justice Department has already said it will seek an immediate stay and appeal. Davis called for the Ninth Circuit to correct the order and said the Supreme Court may have to step in again if lower courts do not. Clark made the same prediction of reversal at the circuit or the high court.
None of that guarantees a final outcome. It does mean the injunction is not the last word. It is the opening move in a fight over whether federal judges can wall off U.S. attorney offices from presidential control.
Federal prosecutors wield enormous power over investigations, charging decisions, and charging priorities. Voters elect a president to set that direction. They do not elect district judges to staff the Justice Department.
When a court-appointed U.S. attorney is locked into office against the president’s removal decision, accountability blurs. The public cannot easily trace who is responsible for the office’s choices. That is not a technicality. It is how self-government either works or erodes.
Myers, the 1979 Office of Legal Counsel opinion, and the 2000 appeals court ruling all point the same direction on the president’s hand over these officers. Bastian’s preliminary injunction points the other way. The White House says that undermines constitutional authority. Outside lawyers call it overreach and expect higher courts to reverse it.
The administration is preparing the stay and the appeal. The record it will carry upward is not thin. It is nearly a century of removal doctrine, plus the Justice Department’s own prior legal analysis, plus recent circuit guidance on court-appointed prosecutors.
Judges do not run the executive branch. If higher courts hold to that line, this order will not stand, and presidential control over U.S. attorneys will remain where the Constitution put it.
