US Attorney Firing Sparks Controversy in Trump's Last Hours in Office

At 7:40 a.m. Wednesday, federal judges in the Western District of Washington swore in former King County Superior Court judge and federal prosecutor Roger Rogoff as their pick for U.S. attorney.

Fifty-four minutes later, President Donald Trump fired him.

Rogoff, who recently resigned as director of the state office of independent investigations, formed to investigate police killings, is now the rope in a tug-of-war with the Trump administration. The district’s 17 sitting federal judges began looking for a replacement for Neil Floyd in January after the president failed to formally nominate him, instead appointing Floyd as interim and later as a “first assistant” in order to sidestep the nomination process.

Rogoff said he was waiting in the lobby of the U.S. District Courthouse downtown to meet with Floyd, and presumably take his office, when he got a text message saying he had been fired.

“We are working on legal action right now,” Rogoff said.

Rogoff’s firing sets up a legal battle over a federal statute that gives a district’s federal judges authority to appoint a U.S. attorney if there is no formal nomination or Senate hearings.

Floyd, a controversial and tough-minded immigration judge, was appointed by Trump last October, but his name was never advanced to the U.S. Senate. Floyd’s appointment was opposed by the state’s senior senator, Patty Murray, and immigration advocates.

Rogoff’s team of lawyers is expected to sue the administration and the U.S. Department of Justice. The Trump administration has fired other court-appointed U.S. attorneys – such as Tessa Gorman in Western Washington, who was replaced by Floyd.

Others include Donald Kinsella, who was appointed by a panel of federal judges in February to fill a vacancy in the Northern District of New York. He was sworn in the same day but was fired by the White House within hours.

Then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche publicly stated, “Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does,” and cited Article 2 of the Constitution to justify the removal.

Blanche – Trump’s former defense attorney, now the acting attorney general who replaced Pam Bondi – appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. He was expected to face scrutiny over the department’s investigations into the president’s foes, its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and his role in setting up Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which is seen as a slush fund for the president’s allies, including some involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, takeover of the U.S. Capitol.

In an order posted in January on the court’s website, Chief U.S. District Judge David Estudillo wrote that the judges – who have the power to appoint a U.S. attorney absent a formal presidential nomination with advice and consent from the U.S. Senate – would begin taking applications for the district’s new top prosecutor the following month.

The judges in the Western District of Washington have used this method to appoint the two prior U.S. attorneys in Western Washington, Annette Hayes and Tessa Gorman.

Law requires that U.S. attorneys, as chief federal law enforcement officials, be appointed by the president – usually after consulting with the senior senator of the state – and then sit before the Senate Judiciary Committee. If approved, the nominee’s name goes before the full U.S. Senate for a vote that must pass by a simple majority.

However, U.S. Code 546 allows the attorney general to appoint an interim U.S. attorney for up to 120 days, a term that expired for Floyd on Feb. 3.

The administration has made no move to formally nominate Floyd or advance his name to the Senate, triggering a section of the law that allows the district’s judges to appoint a U.S. attorney until the position is filled by the president and goes through the confirmation process.

A similar controversy arose around the appointment of Pete Serrano as U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Washington in Spokane. Serrano’s confirmation was considered unlikely due to strong opposition from Murray, who argued that he was unqualified and vowed to block him.

Former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi employed a workaround by appointing Serrano in the role of “first assistant U.S. attorney” – a blueprint for what happened in Western Washington with Floyd. Serrano continues to lead the office in that role.

Murray criticized Serrano’s appointment as an “end run around the Constitution,” and warned it could undermine the office’s legitimacy.

Rogoff, a graduate of the University of Washington School of Law, began his career in the King County prosecuting attorney’s office, where he handled sexual assault and domestic violence cases, eventually rising to supervise those units.

He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Washington, working on violent crime, gang and firearms-related matters.

He was appointed as a King County Superior Court judge by Gov. Jay Inslee in 2013. In 2022, Inslee appointed Rogoff as the first director of the statewide office of independent investigations, created to provide independent reviews of police deadly force incidents.

Floyd began hearing cases at the Tacoma Immigration Court in October 2018. Before that, he was an assistant chief counsel with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tacoma for nearly a decade. He previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., and as a judge advocate with the U.S. Army. He has a law degree from the University of Arkansas School of Law.

The Tacoma immigration court where Floyd practiced has been part of a national debate over whether federal judges can issue bond to release detained people pending possible deportation in some cases. The federal courts have ruled they can, but Floyd and others have said those rulings are advisory only and immigration courts have the final say.

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