Trump fires interim Seattle U.S. attorney, setting up legal battle
Federal judges appointed Seattle prosecutor Roger Rogoff, and Trump fired him less than an hour later, opening a fight over who controls the office.
Federal judges in the Western District of Washington appointed Roger Scott Rogoff as interim U.S. attorney under 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), Chief U.S. District Judge David G. Estudillo swore him in, and President Donald Trump fired him less than an hour later, turning a vacancy-filling move into a direct clash over control of the region’s top federal prosecutor. The court order says the office had been without a Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney since Nicholas W. Brown resigned effective June 21, 2023.
The judges said they acted unanimously and that the appointment was meant to protect “the integrity and effective administration of justice” in the district. Their order lays out a long vacancy, including earlier stopgap arrangements, and the timing of Trump’s firing now sets up a test of whether a president can quickly remove a court-selected interim prosecutor or whether the district court’s authority under Section 546(d) has independent force once the appointment is made.
Rogoff comes to the post with deep roots in Washington’s legal system. Gov. Jay Inslee appointed him to the King County Superior Court in December 2013, and he began hearing cases on January 6, 2014. He later ran Washington state’s Office of Independent Investigations, the civilian agency created in 2021 to investigate police use-of-deadly-force incidents and described by the agency as the first of its kind in the country.
The Western District of Washington U.S. Attorney’s Office has about 85 attorneys and 70 support staff, and its work spans criminal prosecutions, civil litigation, civil-rights enforcement, cybercrime, fentanyl cases and organized crime. A Justice Department release said Charles Neil Floyd had been sworn in as interim U.S. attorney on October 6, 2025 after being appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, underscoring how often the district has been reliant on temporary leadership even before the judges acted. The fight over Rogoff now lands in the larger constitutional dispute over appointment power, prosecutorial independence and how much political control a president can exert over federal law enforcement in Western Washington.
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