Trump loses in court again as judge wrecks his power to fire prosecutors

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he speaks to reporters onboard Air Force One, on travel from West Palm Beach, Florida, to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., February 16, 2026.

Roger Rogoff was Western Washington’s new U.S. attorney for less than hour before President Donald Trump fired him via email. Now a judge is giving him his job back.

Politico reports a federal judge on Thursday ruled that President Donald Trump doesn’t have the power to fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys, rejecting a core tenet of the Trump administration’s approach to top prosecutorial jobs.

“The president cannot unilaterally fire a United States attorney appointed by the district court,” U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian said in a ruling from the bench. Bastian added that doing so “would upend the framework created by the Constitution and the statutes, which together balance the president’s right to appoint and the Senate’s right to confirm.”

Politico reports that the ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Roger Rogoff, whom Trump allegedly fired from the job of U.S. attorney for the Seattle-area Western District of Washington immediately after the district’s federal judges appointed him to the role a few months ago.

The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to circumvent the Senate confirmation process to appoint loyalists in top positions, said Politico, particularly in instances when district judges have exercised their authority to select someone else as the U.S. attorney whom Trump has fired.

Bastian, an Obama appointee, argued that Rogoff is a U.S. attorney and has legally occupied that role since he took the oath of office July 15. In his ruling, Bastian also stripped Trump appointee Charles Neil Floyd of his power after Trump temporarily installed him in Rogoff’s place, determining that the administration had “improperly granted” authority to Floyd.

What may prove more vexing to Trump is that the judge additionally took steps to thwart any attempts by Trump to undermine the judge’s authority or transfer it to someone else.

Politico reports Bastian ordered that the executive office of the president, Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Justice Department are all barred from “any purported firing” or removal of Rogoff from his post, interference with his service in the role and from treating anyone other than Rogoff as the U.S. attorney.

The Seattle Times reports the district’s 17 sitting federal judges appointed Rogoff after Trump failed to formally nominate his own pick for U.S. attorney. Trump instead appointed Floyd as interim last year and later used a workaround to keep him in the spot as “first assistant” U.S. attorney.

Other judges have taken a similar path, with one judge ruling that Lindsey Halligan, Trump's handpicked interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was also unlawfully serving. That decision complicated cases Halligan’s office had been pursuing.

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