AP News51%
Trump immediately fires the new court-appointed top prosecutor in Seattle 43%
By Gene Johnson30%
7/16/2026, 1:57:13 AM
Keywords: Courts, Donald Trump, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Seattle, Or State Wire, Roger Rogoff, Wa State Wire, Id State Wire, District Of Columbia, Politics, Indictments, Charles Neil Floyd, James Comey, Military And Defense, Government Appointments And Nominations, Todd Blanche, James Hundley, Lindsey Halligan, Alina Habba
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Appeal to Emotion, and Halo Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 26.2% saturation with 155 hits. Analysis detected 1,170 faulty-reasoning hits from 591 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 46.6% and a BS Rank of 43% (11,931 of 20,603 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 57.90% of the article peer group.
SEATTLE (AP) — President Donald Trump fired the new top U.S. prosecutor in Seattle on Wednesday less than an hour after the attorney was unanimously appointed by the federal judges in the district, highlighting tensions between the courts and the president over the powerful positions.
Roger Rogoff, a former judge and veteran state and federal prosecutor, was sworn in as U.S. attorney before 8 a.m. at the U.S. courthouse in downtown Seattle.
In a phone interview, he said he then went to the U.S.
Attorney’s Office and asked to meet with Charles Neil Floyd, whose 120-day interim term in the position ended in February.
As he waited in a lobby, Rogoff said, he received an email from the Trump administration informing him he’d been removed.
He is consulting with other lawyers about suing over his firing, he said.
Presidents normally appoint U.S. attorneys, the top federal prosecutor in each judicial district.
The positions require Senate confirmation, except in temporary appointments.
When temporary appointments expire before a nominee is confirmed, the judges in a judicial district can name a U.S. attorney.
But under Trump, the Justice Department has sought to leave unconfirmed prosecutors in their positions indefinitely, often through novel personnel maneuvers.
“District court judges can appoint a temporary U.S.
Attorney, and POTUS can fire them,” Acting U.S.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a social media post Wednesday.
He added that the judges who appointed Rogoff “abandoned the time-honored process of consultation with the administration so that the selected U.S.
Attorney is qualified to serve in the administration.”
In May, a U.S. appeals court panel expressed skepticism that the maneuver was legal.
The federal judges in the city decided to take applications for the position, and it appointed a bipartisan panel to review the applications.
On Wednesday morning the court — comprising 17 active and senior judges appointed by five presidents — issued its unanimous order naming Rogoff the U.S. attorney for western Washington.
Democratic Washington U.S.
Sen.
Patty Murray, who had opposed Floyd for the U.S. attorney job, blasted Rogoff’s quick firing.
“Throughout his career, he has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to public service, and he was appointed legally by the federal judges in the Western District of Washington,” the senator said in a written statement.
“This administration doesn’t want to deal with advice and consent—they just want to install cronies to carry out a corrupt political agenda.”
In December, Alina Habba resigned as the top federal prosecutor for New Jersey after an appeals court said she had been serving in the post unlawfully.
Lindsey Halligan, who pursued indictments against a pair of Trump’s adversaries, left her position as an acting U.S. attorney in Virginia after a judge concluded her appointment was unlawful and that indictments she brought against James and former FBI Director James Comey must be dismissed.
Rogoff, who spent 20 years as a state prosecutor and six as a federal prosecutor before becoming a state judge, said he knew the administration might fire him immediately.
But he said he had no qualms about the potential conflict he was walking into.
Being U.S. attorney is “the best job there is” for a prosecutor, he said.
“I’m really proud of my career,” Rogoff said.
“The fact that the judges of this district — most of whom I’ve spent my career appearing in front of, or trying cases against, or working with — believed that I was the right person to do this work is just really humbling and amazing.”
Speakers
3speakers47%attributed speech313writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coveragePatty Murray
56 attributed words20% of attributed speech77% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.