Roger Rogoff lasted less than an hour as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington. Sworn in at 8 a.m. on July 16, he was still standing in the lobby of the U.S. Attorney's Office when a termination email landed in his inbox, 54 minutes into the job. Now he is suing President Trump and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche over the firing, arguing it crossed constitutional lines.
The lawsuit, first detailed by Just the News, frames the dispute as a separation-of-powers fight: Can the president fire a U.S. attorney whom federal judges appointed under a statute designed to fill vacancies the White House itself failed to fill through Senate confirmation? The answer will shape how much control the executive branch holds over interim federal prosecutors, and whether courts can serve as a backstop when the confirmation process stalls.
The stakes extend well beyond Seattle. The Trump administration has clashed with federal courts in multiple districts over the same question, firing court-appointed prosecutors in Virginia and northern New York under similar circumstances, as Newsmax reported. Each confrontation tests the boundary between presidential appointment power and the judiciary's statutory authority to keep U.S. Attorney's Offices running when the White House does not send a nominee to the Senate.
The seat became available after the administration's own interim U.S. attorney, Charles Neil Floyd, hit the 120-day statutory limit on his service. Under federal law, when an interim appointment expires and the president has not submitted a nominee for Senate confirmation, the district court may appoint a replacement.
Trump never formally submitted Floyd's name to the Senate. A federal appeals court panel had already expressed doubt that Floyd's placement was lawful in the first place, Breitbart reported, which prompted the judges to move forward with their own pick.
All 17 active and senior federal judges in the Western District of Washington voted unanimously to appoint Rogoff, a 57-year-old career prosecutor who had spent decades practicing in the district. The bipartisan panel included judges appointed by presidents of both parties.
Rogoff took the oath at roughly 8 a.m. Pacific time. He walked to the U.S. Attorney's Office and waited in the lobby to meet with the first assistant U.S. attorney. Before that meeting could happen, an email from the Trump administration informed him he was terminated, the New York Post reported.
The speed of the firing suggested the administration had prepared the termination notice in advance, ready to send the moment Rogoff was officially in the role. The whole sequence, from oath to pink slip, took 54 minutes.
Blanche, who is Trump's nominee for permanent attorney general, announced the firing on X while he was simultaneously testifying at his own Senate confirmation hearing. His post laid out the administration's legal position plainly:
"District court judges can appoint a temporary U.S. Attorney, and POTUS can fire them. WDWA judges abandoned the time-honored process of consultation with the administration so that the selected U.S. Attorney is qualified to serve in the administration. Roger Rogoff has been fired by the President."
The statement acknowledged the judiciary's power to appoint but asserted the president's power to terminate. Blanche accused the judges of bypassing a customary consultation process with the executive branch, though the administration had not submitted its own nominee for Senate review.
Rogoff told reporters he was weighing legal options even before the lawsuit materialized. In comments to The New York Times, cited by Fox News, he criticized the administration's approach to staffing federal prosecutor offices:
"I don't think it's the way to run the Department of Justice. When you have this sort of made up way of putting people in these positions, the process breaks down."
He also spoke about what the unanimous judicial appointment meant to him personally. In separate remarks reported by Breitbart, Rogoff said the support of the bench carried real weight:
"The fact that the judges of this district, most of whom I've spent my career appearing in front of, or trying cases against, or working with, believed that I was the right person to do this work is just really humbling and amazing."
The lawsuit he has now filed targets both Trump and Blanche, challenging the legality of the termination. The core legal question is whether the president's general removal power over executive officers extends to interim U.S. attorneys appointed by the judiciary under the federal vacancy statute.
Seattle is not the first district where this fight has erupted. The administration fired court-appointed U.S. attorneys in Virginia and northern New York in similar standoffs. In each case, the White House resisted allowing judges to install prosecutors it had not vetted, while critics argued the administration was sidestepping the Senate confirmation process entirely.
The broader personnel strategy has drawn scrutiny. The administration has used what Newsmax described as "novel personnel maneuvers" to keep unconfirmed prosecutors in place, including shifting titles to avoid triggering Senate confirmation requirements. Blanche's own confirmation process has become a flashpoint, with more than 500 former DOJ employees urging the Senate to block his nomination.
Democrats seized on the Rogoff firing. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington issued a statement accusing the administration of consolidating power at the expense of constitutional norms:
"This administration doesn't want to deal with advice and consent. They just want to install cronies to carry out a corrupt political agenda."
Murray's framing echoes a line of Democratic criticism that has intensified as the administration has moved to replace career prosecutors and court appointees with loyalists across multiple jurisdictions.
Rogoff's lawsuit will force a federal court to decide a question that has been simmering for months. The federal vacancy statute gives district courts the power to appoint interim U.S. attorneys when the president fails to act. But the statute does not explicitly say whether the president can then fire that appointee.
The administration's position is straightforward: the president has broad removal authority over executive officers, and a court-appointed U.S. attorney is still an executive officer. Blanche stated this directly on X, treating the firing as a routine exercise of presidential power.
Rogoff's side will likely argue that allowing the president to fire court-appointed interim prosecutors on arrival renders the vacancy statute meaningless. If the White House can simply terminate any judge-selected replacement, the statutory mechanism designed to ensure continuity in federal law enforcement becomes a dead letter.
No court has issued a definitive ruling on this question. The appeals court panel that questioned Floyd's original appointment signaled skepticism of the administration's legal theory, but that case did not produce a final decision on the removal question. Rogoff's lawsuit could be the vehicle that forces a binding answer.
The timing adds another layer. Blanche announced the firing while seated before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his own confirmation hearing, a moment that has already drawn bipartisan grilling over DOJ independence. Whether senators treat the Rogoff firing as a confirmation issue remains to be seen.
The Western District of Washington currently has no confirmed U.S. attorney and no court-appointed interim. The administration has not announced who will lead the office in Rogoff's absence. Floyd's 120-day term already expired, and the judges' unanimous replacement lasted less than an hour.
That leaves the office in a staffing limbo that affects active federal cases, ongoing investigations, and the daily work of federal law enforcement in western Washington. Career prosecutors in the office continue to handle cases, but the leadership vacuum raises practical questions about charging decisions, plea negotiations, and resource allocation.
Rogoff's lawsuit will move through the federal courts in the coming weeks. If a judge issues a preliminary injunction reinstating him, the administration would face a direct judicial order to accept a prosecutor it tried to remove. If the court sides with the White House, it would confirm that the president holds a veto over any court-appointed interim, effectively giving the executive branch the final word on who runs a U.S. Attorney's Office, even when the president declines to use the Senate confirmation process.
The case also arrives as the administration expands DOJ's operational footprint in other ways, including a new joint task force with the Pentagon to pursue leakers. Each move raises the same underlying question: who controls the machinery of federal prosecution, and what checks exist when the normal confirmation process is not used?
A prosecutor who lasted 54 minutes in office may end up producing the most consequential appointment-power ruling in years. Whether that serves the constitutional order or destabilizes it depends on which branch of government a court decides was supposed to have the last word.
