Fired Seattle U.S. Attorney Roger Rogoff Sues Trump, Says Firing Was Illegal

Roger Rogoff, ousted last week as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, filed suit against the Trump administration on Tuesday, July 21, becoming what CBS News describes as the first court-appointed U.S. attorney fired by President Trump to challenge that removal in court.

The timeline is blunt. Judges on the federal district court in Seattle appointed Rogoff U.S. attorney last week. Within an hour, according to both CBS News and Reuters, he got an email from the Executive Office of the President telling him he was out.

What the lawsuit actually argues

Rogoff's suit, filed in federal court in Seattle, asks a judge to void his firing and declare he remains U.S. attorney until the Senate confirms someone else. His lawyers argue the removal violates the federal statute governing U.S. attorney vacancies and the Constitution's Appointments Clause.

That statute lays out a specific chain: the attorney general can install an interim U.S. attorney for 120 days. After that, the district court itself can appoint someone to hold the post until a Senate-confirmed nominee takes over. Rogoff's lawyers say that's exactly what happened here, and that Trump's firing skips past the Senate's role entirely.

"Defendants' actions will permit the Executive Branch to evade the Senate's advice-and-consent role indefinitely," his lawyers wrote, according to CBS News. Rogoff put it more directly in his own statement: "The President's actions violate the law, and they ignore the protections of the Constitution of the United States. His removal of me, like his removal of other court-appointed U.S. Attorneys across the country, is illegal and cannot stand."

The administration's counter

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, named as a defendant, isn't hiding the reasoning. Blanche said in a social media post that the district judges "did not coordinate with DOJ on this selection" and called Rogoff's firing "wholly within the President's authority," according to Reuters. He put the underlying theory even more plainly in an earlier post cited by Reuters: "District court judges can appoint a temporary U.S. Attorney, and POTUS can fire them."

The administration's position is that a U.S. attorney is an executive branch officer, and the president's removal power over executive officers is one of the most settled principles in constitutional law. If judges can install someone but the president can't remove them, the administration argues, that arrangement itself creates the separation-of-powers problem, not the firing.

Rogoff's side counters that Congress specifically wrote this statute to handle a scenario where the executive branch drags its feet on naming permanent, Senate-confirmed prosecutors. If a president can just fire every judge-appointed U.S. attorney the moment they're sworn in, the statute's entire vacancy-filling mechanism becomes meaningless, and the Senate's confirmation role gets bypassed indefinitely, exactly the outcome Rogoff's lawyers warn about.

Not an isolated case

This is part of a pattern, not a one-off. CBS News reports the Trump administration has fired judge-appointed U.S. attorneys in Virginia, New Jersey, New York and Nevada as well. In Seattle specifically, the office hasn't had a Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney since mid-2023. Trump already fired Rogoff's predecessor, Tessa Gorman, who'd been installed by the same district judges back in May 2024.

Trump has not nominated anyone for the Senate to confirm to the post. Right now the office is run by Charles Neil Floyd, the first assistant U.S. attorney, in an acting capacity.

Who's representing Rogoff, and what's next

Rogoff is represented by Donald Verrilli Jr. of Munger Tolles, according to Reuters, which noted Verrilli did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing. Rogoff, a former federal prosecutor and state court judge, had been working at the law firm Osborn Machler & Neff before his brief appointment.

The case now sits with the federal district court in Seattle, the same court whose own judges appointed Rogoff in the first place. Presumably a different judge will handle the suit given the obvious conflict. No hearing date has been set in the reporting so far.

If Rogoff wins, it would constrain a tactic the administration has now used in at least five districts. If he loses, it effectively confirms that the judicial-appointment provision Congress wrote into the U.S. attorney vacancy statute carries no practical force against a president determined to ignore it.