An Obama Judge Just Ordered the President to Keep His Fired US Attorney

Here’s what you need to understand about the constitutional crisis unfolding in Seattle right now. An Obama-appointed federal judge just told the President of the United States that he can’t fire a US attorney. Read that again because it’s as absurd as it sounds.

Judge Stanley Bastian issued a preliminary injunction forcing the Justice Department to reinstate Roger Rogoff as US Attorney for the Western District of Washington. Rogoff wasn’t even appointed by Trump. He was installed by federal judges after Trump fired the previous US attorney. And now those same judges are saying the president doesn’t have the authority to remove him. This isn’t judicial overreach anymore. It’s judicial usurpation.

The White House called it exactly what it is. “This is yet another ruling from an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump’s agenda and undermine his constitutional authority,” said spokesperson Lauren Bis. She’s right, and frankly she’s being diplomatic about it. US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. That’s not a controversial statement. It’s basic constitutional law that’s been settled for decades.

Article II of the Constitution couldn’t be clearer about executive authority. The president runs the executive branch. Full stop. He appoints and removes officials who carry out his policies. That’s not autocracy, that’s the structure our founders designed. When federal judges start dictating who gets to prosecute federal crimes, they’re not checking executive power. They’re seizing it.

Mike Davis, founder and president of Article III Project, didn’t mince words. “Democrat judges handpicked their own US 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.” He also pointed out something almost too perfect to be true. Judge Bastian misspelled his own first name in the order, leaving out the “e” in Stanley. You know what? That’s exactly the level of careful legal analysis we’ve come to expect from these emergency injunctions.

The legal precedent here isn’t ambiguous. A 1979 Justice Department opinion concluded presidents have this authority. A 2000 federal appeals court ruling said the same thing. So what changed? Donald Trump got elected again, that’s what changed. Suddenly decades of established legal doctrine don’t matter because orange man bad.

Jeff Clark, litigation vice president for the Oversight Project, predicts Judge Bastian will be reversed. “The President’s power to remove US Attorneys must be unfettered consistent with Article II of the Constitution,” he said. The question isn’t whether he’s right. The question is how much damage gets done while we wait for the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court to restore sanity.

Think about what this means in practice. A district court judge in Seattle just ordered what amounts to a coup inside the Justice Department. He’s forcing DOJ to recognize someone as a US attorney who the president explicitly fired. He’s commanding executive branch officials to treat his judicial appointee as the legitimate officeholder. That’s not separation of powers. That’s one branch of government commanding another branch to obey its personnel decisions.

The DOJ has already announced it will seek an immediate stay and appeal. They have to. If this stands, every US attorney appointment becomes a potential hostage situation where federal judges can install their preferred prosecutors and shield them from presidential removal. The executive branch answers to the president, not to lifetime-appointed judges who think they run the country.

Conservative legal experts are sounding the alarm, and they should be. This isn’t about Roger Rogoff or even about Trump specifically. It’s about whether we still have a functioning separation of powers or whether federal judges have granted themselves veto power over executive branch personnel. Davis called it a constitutional crisis, and he’s not exaggerating.

The Supreme Court has already handed Trump one interim victory on deportations while legal battles continue. They may need to step in here too before every district court judge in America decides he gets to staff the executive branch. These aren’t hypotheticals anymore. We’re watching the administrative state metastasize in real time, with black-robed activists providing legal cover for bureaucratic resistance.

Judge Bastian sits in the Ninth Circuit, which tells you everything you need to know about how this will play out. That circuit has been reversed by the Supreme Court more than any other. But reversals take time, and in the meantime we have federal judges issuing orders that would make King George III blush. The founders fought a revolution over executive power being wielded without consent. Now we have judges claiming they can force the president to keep prosecutors he fired.

The irony would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous. The same people who spent four years screaming about Trump being a dictator now cheer when judges seize executive authority for themselves. Apparently separation of powers only matters when it limits the guy you voted against.