President Trump fired Roger Rogoff as US attorney for Western Washington less than an hour after federal judges swore him into the job, after the Justice Department said the court bypassed the White House in picking him.
Roger Rogoff took the oath as interim US attorney for the Western District of Washington at 7:40 a.m. Wednesday inside the federal courthouse in downtown Seattle. He was still standing in the lobby when the email arrived. Fifty-four minutes after he was sworn in, President Trump removed him from office.
"It basically said, 'I'm informing you that pursuant to his authority, President Trump is hereby removing you from the office of the United States attorney,'" Rogoff told The Seattle Times, describing the notice he received before he had a chance to sit down at his desk.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche laid out the administration's reasoning directly. WDWA judges, he said, "abandoned the time-honored process of consultation with the administration so that the selected U.S. attorney is qualified to serve in the administration." Blanche's statement made clear the firing was not about anything Rogoff did in the job, since he never had the chance to do anything in it. It was about who got to choose him.
Under federal law, when an interim US attorney appointment lapses without Senate confirmation, district court judges gain the authority to name a replacement. That is what happened in Seattle. Rogoff, a former King County Superior Court judge with a long record as a state and federal prosecutor, was the bench's choice. The Trump administration says that choice needed a green light from Washington first, and didn't get one.
Rogoff disputes that the firing is even legal and told the Times he is preparing to sue Trump and the Justice Department to get the post back. That is Rogoff's claim, not a settled legal question, and it will now play out in court rather than in a press release.
A pattern, not an isolated incident
The speed of the move is what has drawn attention, but the substance fits a pattern the administration has been running since the start of the year: US attorney posts are treated as executive appointments that answer to the president, not to the judiciary, and the White House has shown little patience for districts that try to fill vacancies on their own terms. Judges retain the statutory power to appoint interim US attorneys when nominees stall, but that power has increasingly become a flashpoint wherever the administration feels cut out of the process.
Western Washington has been without a Senate-confirmed US attorney for months, leaving the office in a string of interim hands. Wednesday's firing means it still is. It is not yet clear who the Trump administration wants in the role, or whether the WDWA bench will attempt another appointment now that Blanche has spelled out what the administration expects beforehand. A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately detail a replacement pick or say whether other districts with court-appointed interim US attorneys should expect similar scrutiny.
For now, the office in Seattle has an empty chair at the top, a former judge who spent less than an hour holding a title he says was taken from him unlawfully, and a Justice Department that wants every district to understand the same thing: whoever runs a US attorney's office does so with the White House's sign-off, not around it. Rogoff's lawsuit, if filed, will test how far that authority actually extends. Watch for whether the WDWA judges make a second appointment, and whether Rogoff's legal challenge reaches a judge who has to rule on his own removal.
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