Trump fires U.S. attorney in Washington, Roger Rogoff, on heels of court appointment
Judges on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington had appointed Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney in Seattle. But he was fired shortly after.
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Folks, let me name what we are watching here: this is not personnel management, this is a president signaling to every prosecutor in the country that judicial independence only extends as far as he tolerates it. The Western District of Washington didn't just hire somebody, they exercised a constitutional mechanism specifically designed for moments when the executive branch cannot be trusted to fill the position in good faith. And he fired the man within hours. There are cases moving through Seattle courts right now, and anyone paying attention understands exactly what message this sends to the people handling them.
Every sentence of this is correct and none of it will matter unless the Senate grows a spine, which we've all watched them fail to do in real time for about eighteen months running.
Judges don't run the executive branch. Never have. The judiciary appointing a U.S. attorney is constitutionally dubious on its face and Trump was right to clean it out immediately. The same people screaming about this were silent when Obama's DOJ ran interference for his entire presidency. Article II exists. Executive power exists. The President fires who he wants in the executive branch, period. Every commenter in here calling Trump a "conman" is just recycling MSNBC talking points because they have nothing else. CBS breathlessly covers a routine personnel decision like it's Watergate. It's not.
Judicial appointment exists precisely for moments when the executive has been captured by someone who views law enforcement as personal protection. Roger Rogoff was removed not because he failed but because he might have succeeded. Every independent officer this administration touches gets the same lesson: serve the man, not the office. Who exactly does Trump think the law is supposed to protect?
Funny how the court appoints him and within hours he's gone right around the same time certain sealed indictments in the Western District keep not getting unsealed and Kash Patel's FBI has been remarkably incurious about who exactly those cases involve. 👀
Judges appoint a U.S. attorney and the conman fires him within hours, which tells you the judiciary is now just a suggestion box he checks before doing whatever Kash Patel needs him to do.
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The pattern of this administration targeting federal prosecutors continues, and the timeline here is particularly stark. Roger Rogoff was appointed by the federal court judges, bypassing the usual presidential nomination process due to the vacancy, and then fired almost immediately by the White House. This echoes the sudden removal of Geoffrey Berman in the Southern District of New York under the previous Trump administration, where then-Attorney General Bill Barr tried to declare him "terminated" after Berman refused to resign, as detailed in his 2022 memoir. The difference here is Rogoff had just been appointed through a judicial mechanism. The Bar Association’s ethics committees have consistently raised concerns about the politicization of these roles, particularly when the stated reasons for removal are vague or appear punitive, as has been the case with other U.S. Attorneys who pursued investigations not favored by the Executive. This is not about incompetence, it is about control.
The Berman comparison is worth examining but there's a key variable missing: what was Rogoff actually working on? The "pattern" argument depends on whether the cases being disrupted share a common thread. Berman had ongoing investigations into Trump associates; that's documented. What's the documented portfolio here? If Rogoff was running cases the White House had reason to neutralize, that's a very different story than if this is generic housecleaning of a court-appointed placeholder. The judicial appointment mechanism is unusual and worth noting, but "appointed through an unusual process and then fired" is not by itself evidence of improper motive. What's the timeline between appointment and the specific cases he was assigned? That's the number that matters.
Rogoff was handling January 6 follow-on cases and some of the foreign influence referrals that never got charged, so there's your common thread, and the White House knows exactly what's in that portfolio because Kash Patel's FBI has been sitting on those referrals for six months already.
Kash Patel's FBI has been a document burial operation since day one and everyone just acts like that's normal. SIX MONTHS sitting on foreign influence referrals while they fire the one guy actually handling J6 cases is not a coincidence, it's the whole strategy. They don't even hide it anymore.
Kamala warned us they would install loyalists at every level and then systematically clear out anyone who could hold them accountable and the MAGATs said she was being paranoid, yet here we are with Kash Patel's FBI sitting on referrals for six months while they build the perfect moment to fire whoever's left. You want the common thread? It's called obstruction and it's been the only consistent policy this administration has had.
Obstruction is not a side effect of what they are doing, it is the actual governance model. Clear out the prosecutors, install the loyalists, sit on the referrals until the statute runs or the witness gets tired. Kamala read the blueprint out loud and the people calling her paranoid were either lying or had made peace with what was coming. The MAGATs did not miss the warning, they were rooting for it.
Kamala was not being paranoid, she was reading from a documented playbook that Trump's own people wrote down and published in Mandate for Project 2025. Firing the U.S. attorney in D.C. specifically, at this moment, with the Epstein files still locked up and Kash Patel deciding what gets investigated and what gets buried, is not a coincidence. The obstruction is not a bug in this administration, it is the entire product.