Petty Trump Fires Top Prosecutor Minutes After His Appointment

The move could trigger a major legal battle with the administration.

President Donald Trump fired a unanimously appointed U.S. attorney less than an hour after he was installed in a bid to keep his own unconfirmed pick as Seattle’s top prosecutor.

The president has spent his second term in office attempting to put loyalists in charge of federal prosecutors’ offices nationwide, though several of them—including his former personal attorney, Alina Habba, and adviser, Lindsey Halligan—have been forced to step down after failing to secure enough support to survive the Senate confirmation process.

Under federal law, interim U.S. attorneys can only serve for 120 days. If the appointment expires before a presidential nominee is confirmed, the judges in a federal district have the power to name a new U.S. attorney.

A bipartisan panel of judges in the Western District of Washington unanimously chose Roger Rogoff, a former judge and veteran prosecutor, to take over after the term of Trump’s interim U.S. attorney, Charles Neil Floyd, expired in February.

Rogoff was sworn in at about 8 a.m. Wednesday, and then went to the U.S. Attorney’s Office to meet with Floyd, the AP reported. While he waited in the lobby, the Trump administration emailed him to say he’d been fired.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/petty-donald-trump-fires-top-prosecutor-roger-rogoff-minutes-after-his-appointment/