Donald Trump has been slapped down by an Obama-appointed federal judge the president had tried to boot from overseeing a case against him.
Roger Rogoff, 57, was unanimously handed the job of U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington by the district’s 17 federal judges on July 15—and axed by Trump, 80, just 54 minutes after being sworn in.
His appointment would have made him the boss of Trump’s own man in Seattle. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi installed Charles Neil Floyd, a Tacoma immigration judge, at the office’s helm in September.
Trump never asked the Senate to confirm Floyd, and when Floyd’s interim term lapsed in February, the Justice Department simply made him first assistant U.S. attorney for the district and left the top job vacant, leaving him in charge by default.
Rogoff sued six days after his axing, in the first case of its kind testing whether a president can fire a prosecutor lawfully installed by the courts. Because Seattle’s own judges made the appointment, the case could not stay with any of them, the Daily Beast’s sister Substack, PunchUp, reported.
The first judge assigned, George W. Bush appointee Ricardo Martinez, recused himself, and the lawsuit passed to Stanley Bastian, 68—chief judge in Washington’s Eastern District, an Obama pick confirmed 95-0 by the Senate—under a standing Ninth Circuit designation letting outside judges sit in the district, court records show.
The DOJ wasn’t happy. Its lawyers filed a motion demanding the Ninth Circuit reassign the case—or, failing that, that Bastian recuse himself over his sideline as a regular visiting judge in Seattle.
Bastian’s answer, delivered Thursday without so much as an oral argument, was a flat no. The government offered “no binding authority” requiring him to step aside, he wrote in the three-page order, noting drily that the defendants considered the reassignment “somehow improper.”
He added that he played no part in hiring Rogoff and has no hand in running the Seattle court—then quoted the oath he swore to “administer justice without respect to persons,” and promised to honor it in full.
The administration insists the firing was lawful. “District court judges can appoint a temporary U.S. Attorney, and POTUS can fire them,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche posted on X the day Rogoff was fired. A DOJ spokesperson said the move was “wholly within the President’s authority.”
But courts keep ruling against the administration’s games over who runs prosecutors’ offices. In November, Clinton appointee Cameron Currie tossed the indictments of James Comey and Letitia James, ruling Trump’s hand-picked prosecutor Lindsey Halligan had been unlawfully installed in Virginia.
Obama appointee Matthew Brann ruled Trump’s ex-personal lawyer Alina Habba was unlawfully serving as New Jersey’s top prosecutor—a finding upheld on appeal in December—and in March, Brann ruled the trio installed to replace her was serving unlawfully too.
Rogoff, who says Trump’s actions “violate the law,” is now asking Bastian to order him back into the job—meaning the administration’s fate in the case rests with the judge it just tried, and failed, to remove.
PunchUp has contacted the Justice Department, the White House, and Rogoff’s legal team for comment.
Tom Latchem exposes the secrets, scandals, and stories that powerful people and institutions want to keep under wraps. Follow all of his reporting at PunchUp on Substack.
