An Obama-appointed federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump from removing the court-appointed U.S. attorney in western Washington, ordering the Justice Department to treat Roger Rogoff as the rightful officeholder and restore his ability to serve. Fox News Digital reported that U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian issued a preliminary injunction reinstating Rogoff and barring the administration from treating him as lawfully removed.
The ruling lands in a larger fight over who controls federal prosecutors. It pits presidential removal power against court appointment of U.S. attorneys and sets up a fast track toward higher courts.
Rogoff serves as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington. Federal judges appointed him to the post. The Trump administration then moved to fire him. Bastian’s injunction stops that removal for now and directs the Justice Department to recognize Rogoff in the role.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis framed the order as judicial interference with core executive power.
"This is yet another ruling from an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump’s agenda and undermine his constitutional authority. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President,"
The Justice Department’s Rapid Response account said the department rejects the outcome and will move quickly.
"We disagree with the decision and intend to seek an immediate stay and will appeal,"
That posture means the fight will not end in the district court. A stay request would ask a higher court to freeze Bastian’s order while the appeal proceeds. The Ninth Circuit stands as the next likely stop if the department follows through.
A preliminary injunction is an early court order that preserves the status quo before a full trial on the merits. Bastian’s order reinstates Rogoff and forbids the administration from treating the firing as lawful. It also requires the Justice Department to recognize him as the rightful officeholder and restore his ability to serve.
Fox News Digital described the core dispute as whether a president may fire a U.S. attorney whom federal judges appointed. The administration says yes. The injunction, for the moment, says the removal does not stand.
Case captions, docket numbers, and the full verbatim text of the order were not laid out in the available reporting. Absolute dates and times for the injunction and the underlying firing also were not stated. What is clear is the operative result: Rogoff is back in, and the department is told to treat him as the officeholder.
The legal history cited in the reporting points strongly toward presidential control. A 1979 Justice Department opinion concluded that the president’s statutory authority to remove “each United States attorney” also reaches prosecutors appointed by federal judges.
A 2000 federal appeals court ruling reached the same bottom line. It held that the president has authority to fire a U.S. attorney appointed by federal judges.
Supreme Court precedent sits underneath both. In Myers v. United States in 1926, the Court addressed President Woodrow Wilson’s firing of a postmaster without Senate consent. The Court ruled that the president generally holds constitutional authority to remove executive branch officers.
Those authorities matter because U.S. attorneys sit inside the executive branch. They enforce federal criminal law and carry out Justice Department policy. If judges can lock a court-appointed prosecutor into office over a president’s objection, removal power shrinks and accountability shifts.
Mike Davis, founder and president of Article III, hammered the ruling as a breach of basic structure.
"Another lawless and dangerous ruling. Violating the separation of powers. By another Democrat activist judge. This time? Seattle Obama Judge Stanley Bastian,"
Davis argued that Democrat judges selected their own U.S. attorney, that the president through his attorney general fired him, and that Article II gives the president clear power to fire Justice Department officials. He said Bastian created an unnecessary constitutional crisis by ordering removal of the president’s pick and installing what Davis called the judge’s “judicial puppet.” Davis said the Ninth Circuit must fix it, or the Supreme Court will have to step in again.
Jeff Clark, litigation vice president at the Oversight Project, tied the issue directly to Article II.
"The President's power to remove U.S. Attorneys must be unfettered consistent with Article II of the Constitution. Judge Stanley Bastian is wrong here to order Rogoff reinstated. I predict Judge Bastian will eventually be reversed, whether at the Ninth Circuit or by the Supreme Court,"
Brian Nieves, a partner at Holtzman Vogel, put the objection in blunt institutional terms.
"Judicial overreach, plain and simple. The judiciary does not get to run the Executive Branch. Period,"
Davis also noted that Bastian’s first name was misspelled in the order, with the “e” missing from Stanley. One user quoted in the coverage mocked the error as a sign of the work product’s quality. The misspelling does not decide the law, but it fed the political reaction around the ruling.
The Rogoff clash sits inside a string of disputes over Trump U.S. attorney appointments. Similar fights have already played out in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York.
In New Jersey, the administration sought to keep Alina Habba leading the U.S. attorney’s office after her interim term ended. Federal courts rejected that effort. Desiree Grace, the judges’ original appointee, did not simply take over the office after that rejection. The pattern is the same theme: who picks the prosecutor, who can remove the prosecutor, and how long a court-backed appointee can stay against a president’s will.
Bastian first drew an Obama nomination in 2013. Conservative critics have used that pedigree, along with the Seattle setting of the dispute, to argue that the bench is resisting a duly elected president’s control of his own Justice Department. The White House line tracks that view. The department’s promise of an immediate stay and appeal tracks it too.
The Justice Department has said it will seek a stay and appeal. A stay would pause the injunction while higher courts review the removal question. If the Ninth Circuit takes the case, it will face the statutory removal issue and the constitutional Article II claim. Commentators named in the coverage already point past that court to the Supreme Court if needed.
Investigators of the legal dispute, in practical terms, will need to determine how the court-appointment statute interacts with presidential removal power, whether the 1979 Justice Department opinion and the 2000 appeals ruling still control, and how Myers applies to modern U.S. attorneys. Authorities have not publicly released, in the reporting at hand, the full docket details or the complete operative language of Bastian’s order beyond the description of reinstatement and recognition.
The administration’s replacement pick referenced in criticism was not named in the available facts. Exact appointment and firing timestamps for Rogoff also were not stated, though related coverage described a firing minutes after appointment in the broader fight over these offices. Those gaps do not change the present posture: Rogoff is ordered back in, and the executive branch says it will fight.
U.S. attorneys are not side offices. They decide charging policy, major investigations, and day-to-day federal enforcement in their districts. If a president cannot remove a prosecutor installed by judges, then electoral accountability for federal law enforcement weakens in that district.
The opposing view, reflected in the injunction’s result, treats the court appointment route as real authority that the executive cannot brush aside midstream. Bastian’s order gives that view immediate force. The department’s stay-and-appeal plan tests whether higher courts will keep it.
Historical materials cited in the coverage lean the other direction. The 1979 opinion, the 2000 appeals ruling, and Myers all support broad presidential removal power over executive officers. That is why critics call the injunction a separation-of-powers problem rather than a routine personnel dust-up.
The reporting also noted separate Justice Department activity on another matter, including a Friday request to dismiss a lawsuit over the Anti-Weaponization Fund after Attorney General Todd Blanche formally terminated it on Aug. 2. That filing is distinct from the Rogoff injunction. It does show a department moving on multiple legal fronts at once while the U.S. attorney removal fight accelerates.
Article II vests executive power in the president. U.S. attorneys work inside that branch. Court appointment statutes create a path to fill vacancies, but the long-running claim from the Justice Department’s own 1979 opinion is that removal power still reaches those appointees. The 2000 appeals decision said the same. Myers supplies the constitutional backbone for removing executive officers.
Bastian’s preliminary injunction rejects the administration’s removal on the ground before him and restores Rogoff for now. Davis, Clark, and Nieves argue that result inverts the chain of command. The White House says U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. The department says it will seek an immediate stay and appeal.
Higher courts will have to decide whether decades of removal authority still govern, or whether a district injunction can keep a court-appointed prosecutor in place against the president. Until then, the Western District of Washington operates under an order that reinstates Rogoff and directs the Justice Department to recognize him.
When judges install prosecutors and then block elected presidents from removing them, voters lose the clean line of accountability the Constitution built into the executive branch.
