Trump Fires Seattle US Attorney Roger Rogoff 54 Minutes After Judges Swore Him In

Federal judges in the Western District of Washington swore in Roger Rogoff as the district's new U.S. attorney at 7:40 a.m. Wednesday. By 8:34 a.m., President Trump had fired him, according to the Seattle Times, as reported by the Spokesman-Review.

Rogoff, a former King County Superior Court judge and career prosecutor, was still in the courthouse lobby waiting to meet with First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd when the email hit his phone. He told the Associated Press he'd gone there to formally take over the office.

The firing wasn't random. It's the third time the Trump administration has removed a U.S. attorney installed by federal judges under a specific statute that lets a district's judges pick a replacement if the White House doesn't formally nominate someone within 120 days of an interim appointment. Tessa Gorman held the Western Washington post before Floyd; she was fired too. Donald Kinsella in the Northern District of New York was sworn in and fired within hours in February.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made the administration's position blunt on X Wednesday evening: "District court judges can appoint a temporary U.S. Attorney, and POTUS can fire them." Blanche accused the Western Washington judges of abandoning "the time-honored process of consultation with the administration" and said Rogoff simply wasn't qualified to serve.

Article II gives the president executive power, and U.S. attorneys are executive branch officers who serve at the president's pleasure once in office. Nobody disputes that a sitting U.S. attorney can be fired by the president. The harder question is whether Trump can fire someone the moment judges use their statutory appointment power specifically because his own administration never sent a nominee to the Senate. Blanche made the same argument in the Kinsella case, telling reporters at the time, "Judges don't pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does."

The problem for the administration is the pattern. In each case, the White House didn't nominate anyone, let the 120-day interim clock run out, then complained when judges exercised the exact power Congress gave them for that scenario. Neil Floyd was appointed interim U.S. attorney in October, per the New Republic, and Trump never sent his nomination to the Senate. Instead Floyd was kept on as "first assistant," a maneuver Neil Floyd's own history as an immigration judge made politically loaded in a blue state, and one the Seattle Times says was designed to "sidestep the nomination process."

Washington Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, called Rogoff "eminently qualified" and accused the administration of wanting "an out-of-touch extremist who will put Trump over the rule of law." She said the DOJ is being run like "his personal law firm" rather than an institution answerable to the public. If a president can simply refuse to nominate anyone and then fire whoever judges appoint under the stat