An Obama-appointed federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to treat court-appointed U.S. Attorney Roger Rogoff as the rightful top prosecutor in Seattle after the Trump administration moved to remove him, locking in a direct clash over who controls the executive branch’s prosecutors.
U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian issued a preliminary injunction reinstating Rogoff as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington and barring the administration from treating him as lawfully removed. The order also directed the department to restore Rogoff’s ability to serve and not obstruct his access to office resources.
The fight is not a side spat. It goes to the core question of whether federal judges can handpick a U.S. attorney and then shield that appointee from a sitting president. White House officials call the ruling an attack on constitutional authority. The Justice Department says it will seek an immediate stay and appeal.
Western District of Washington judges unanimously appointed Rogoff in July after the post went unfilled by a Senate-confirmed nominee, the Associated Press reported. Rogoff took the oath and, shortly afterward, faced termination by the administration. He sued and is believed to be the first judicially appointed U.S. attorney to do so.
The timing was stark. District judges had appointed him less than an hour before the firing attempt, and the removal fight moved just as fast. That sequence mirrors earlier reporting on the DOJ’s move against the newly sworn Seattle prosecutor minutes after he took office.
Bastian restored Rogoff as the top federal prosecutor in Seattle and granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Trump administration from blocking his access to U.S. attorney’s office resources in the Western District of Washington, the Washington Examiner reported.
In the order, Bastian framed the dispute around the statute’s plain text rather than presidential removal power. He rejected the idea that the law quietly reserves a veto for the White House after judges fill a vacancy.
Bastian wrote:
“It does not say ‘until the president fires the person selected.’”
He also stated:
“Mr. Roger Rogoff is the United States attorney for the Western District of Washington and has been the rightful holder of that office since July 15, 2026, when he took the oath of office.”
That language puts a district judge in the position of naming who holds a major Justice Department office and then commanding the executive branch to treat that person as the officeholder. For conservatives who view U.S. attorneys as presidential officers, that is the whole problem.
Fox News Digital reported the White House response in blunt terms. Spokesperson Lauren Bis tied the ruling to a broader pattern of courts slowing the administration’s agenda.
Bis said:
“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 DOJ Rapid Response account answered the same way on the legal track. It said the department disagrees with the decision, intends to seek an immediate stay, and will appeal.
That is the institutional posture taxpayers should expect from an executive branch defending Article II. Presidents hire and fire the people who enforce federal law. When a district court freezes that process, the department either fights or cedes control of its own chain of command.
The legal backdrop is not thin. In Myers v. United States in 1926, the Supreme Court held that the president generally has constitutional authority to remove executive branch officers. That case centered on President Woodrow Wilson’s firing of a postmaster without Senate consent.
A 1979 Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion went further on this exact office. It concluded that the president’s statutory authority to remove “each United States attorney” also extends to prosecutors appointed by federal judges.
A 2000 federal appeals court ruling reached the same bottom line, concluding the president has authority to fire a U.S. attorney appointed by federal judges. Those authorities are the reason critics say Bastian’s injunction is not a routine personnel stay. It collides with long-standing executive removal power.
If that older line of authority holds, the preliminary injunction is temporary theater. The Ninth Circuit, or the Supreme Court, would be left to restore the baseline rule: the president runs the Justice Department, not the local district bench.
Article III Project founder and president Mike Davis hammered the ruling as a separation-of-powers breach and pointed to Bastian’s Obama nomination history. Bastian was first nominated by President Barack Obama in 2013.
Davis wrote:
“Another lawless and dangerous ruling. Violating the separation of powers. By another Democrat activist judge. This time? Seattle Obama Judge Stanley Bastian.”
He continued that Democrat judges had handpicked their own U.S. attorney, that the president through his attorney general fired him, and that Article II gives the president clear executive power to fire Justice Department officials. Davis also argued Bastian created an unnecessary constitutional crisis by ordering the removal of the president’s pick and installing what Davis called a judicial puppet, saying the Ninth Circuit must fix it or the Supreme Court will have to step in again.
Davis further noted that Bastian’s first name was misspelled in the order, missing the “e” in Stanley. One user captured the reaction in plain terms: the federal judge misspelled his own name in his order, and that is how you know it is quality legal work.
Oversight Project litigation vice president Jeff Clark framed the stakes in constitutional terms and predicted reversal.
Clark said:
“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.”
Holtzman Vogel partner Brian Nieves stripped it down further.
Nieves said:
“Judicial overreach, plain and simple. The judiciary does not get to run the Executive Branch. Period.”
Those critiques matter because they name the structural issue. The judiciary interprets law. It does not staff the president’s prosecutor corps and then freeze the president out when he asserts control. Readers watching repeated district-court blocks of enforcement policy already know this pattern from fights over immigration and other priorities, including cases where a federal judge halted deportation of an illegal immigrant after an ICE shooting in Austin.
Similar disputes have already flared in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York over Trump U.S. attorney appointments. In New Jersey, the administration sought to keep Alina Habba leading the office on an interim basis after her interim term ended. Federal courts rejected the effort to maintain her authority. Desiree Grace, the judges’ original appointee in that dispute, did not simply take over the office after those rulings.
That trail of cases shows a repeated mechanism: court appointment into a vacancy, then litigation the moment the White House tries to reclaim the office. Each injunction invites the next. Each delay leaves a major district under a prosecutor the president did not choose and cannot freely remove if district judges get the last word.
Lawmakers on the right have already treated aggressive judicial blocks of administration policy as a political accountability issue, including a GOP impeachment resolution aimed at an Obama-appointed judge who blocked a Trump TPS order. The Rogoff injunction sits in the same broader conflict over whether elected executive power yields to district-court management of federal offices.
Separate tracks of legal combat have also intensified around the Justice Department and White House authority, from high-profile prosecutorial fights such as a GOP senator’s suit against Jack Smith over secret phone-records seizures to access battles like the CNN, MSNBC, and Politico lawsuit over a White House press ban. The personnel fight in Seattle is different in form, but it belongs to the same struggle over who directs federal power.
For now, the operative result is concrete. Rogoff is ordered recognized as the rightful officeholder. The administration is barred from treating the firing as lawful. The Justice Department must restore his ability to serve under the preliminary injunction while it seeks a stay and presses the appeal.
The open legal question is whether a president can fire a U.S. attorney appointed by federal judges under the statutory process for filling a vacancy. Older executive-branch and appellate authority says yes. Bastian’s order says the court-appointed prosecutor stays.
That is why the case is built for higher review. A single district judge in the Western District of Washington has effectively decided who runs a major U.S. attorney’s office against the president’s removal decision. If Myers, the 1979 OLC opinion, and the 2000 appeals ruling mean what they say, that arrangement cannot be the final word.
The public interest is straightforward. U.S. attorneys wield charging power, investigative leverage, and the federal government’s courtroom authority. Voters elect a president to set enforcement priorities through officers who answer to him. When judges appoint the prosecutor and then enjoin the president’s removal, accountability runs to the courthouse, not the ballot box.
If presidents cannot remove Justice Department officers who exercise core executive power, “serves at the pleasure of the President” becomes a slogan with no teeth. The appeal will test whether Article II still governs the people who prosecute in the president’s name.
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