Battle over appointees intensifies as Trump fires court-appointed nominee

President Donald Trump has the constitutional authority to remove court-appointed U.S. attorneys, even if they are legally appointed by judges, according to former Justice Department official John Yoo, who said the Constitution gives the president broad impeachment authority over executive branch officials.

“Otherwise you might have U.S. attorneys who enforce federal law differently than the president, and the president is who we all elect in the country, and the president is accountable to him,” Yoo said in an interview on Fox News Digital.

Trump used that power this week by firing Donald Kinsella just a few hours later. federal judges The Northern District of New York voted to appoint him to fill the vacancy left by Trump appointee John Sarcone, whose interim term has expired.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche glowingly explained the move social media postdeclares that judges “do not pick” U.S. lawyers, further deepening the constitutional dispute over who will ultimately control them.

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At the center of the latest dispute is a law that allows federal courts to appoint interim U.S. attorneys if a presidential nominee is not confirmed by the Senate and an official’s term ends. Blanche argued that the court’s move to fill a U.S. attorney vacancy was unconstitutional; The comment came as the Ministry of Justice appealed Judge Lorna Schofield’s decision last month to disqualify Sarcone for his expired term.

But Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said both the justices’ actions were legal because of a “quirk” in the law and that the president still had the authority to fire Kinsella.

“No matter how an executive officer is appointed… none of these positions under the Constitution have a specific way to remove officers, and therefore the president can remove all officers in the executive branch, especially all officers in the Department of Justice,” Yoo said.

Yoo said the Constitution lays out detailed processes for appointing U.S. attorneys but is “silent” on how they would be removed.

“It has detailed procedures for how you appoint them. It doesn’t actually discuss how you remove them at all,” Yoo said, referring to complex federal vacancy laws that govern how U.S. attorneys are appointed on an interim and acting basis. he said.

John A. Sarcone III appears at the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the James T. Foley Federal Courthouse in Albany, NY, on Monday, April 28, 2025. (Will Waldron/Albany Times Union via Getty Images)

He noted that existing law and Supreme Court precedent have long given the president ultimate authority to remove lower-level officials in the executive branch, meaning that an official like the attorney general cannot remove court-selected appointees like Kinsella, but Trump can.

Kinsella did not respond to a request for comment regarding his termination.

By law, US attorneys are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. However, if the Senate does not act, the president can appoint an interim U.S. attorney for a limited period of time (usually 120 days). If that term expires without a candidate’s approval, the law gives district court judges the authority to appoint a replacement to prevent a vacancy in the office.

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Trump, however, has struggled to win Senate confirmation of U.S. attorney nominees from blue states, where the upper chamber’s blue shift tradition means home state senators must greenlight their nominees.

Interim appointments in those states, including New York, California, Nevada, New Jersey and Virginia, have faced legal setbacks as federal judges found that Trump cannot repeatedly appoint the same person for consecutive interim terms.

For example, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (DY) has refused to confirm any of Trump’s nominees in New York. After Trump fired senior federal prosecutor Kinsella, Schumer said in a statement that the president wanted an unqualified “political loyalist” in the job.

Alina Habba speaks with members of the media outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday, March 24, 2025. (Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“Everyone knows Trump values ​​only one quality in a U.S. Attorney: complete political obedience,” Schumer said.

In New Jersey, Trump swiftly fired the court-appointed U.S. attorney after a lower court found that Alina Habba’s interim mandate had expired. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit upheld the lower court’s finding that Habba served unlawfully.

In the Eastern District of Virginia, the lead prosecutor’s role also remains unclear as the Justice Department appeals a judge’s decision to disqualify Lindsey Halligan, who brought high-profile indictments against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. The judge dismissed those cases, finding that Halligan was improperly appointed.

The Trump DOJ exploited several loopholes in the law to appoint Sarcone, Habba, Halligan and others, arguing in appeals that the judges who disqualified them and replaced them with court-selected U.S. attorneys had misread the law.

“It is important that a DOJ component be overseen by someone who has the support of the Executive Branch and that a U.S. Attorney’s Office can continue to operate even in the absence of a Senate-confirmed or interim U.S. Attorney General,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in court documents related to Habba’s case. he wrote.

Yoo signaled that courts were right to abide by legal term limits on acting and interim terms, but reiterated that Trump has sole impeachment authority.

He has maintained that, since the founding, officials enforcing federal law have been subject to Article II of the Constitution. He said he was removed from office at the president’s request pursuant to the clause and the duty to take care that the laws are “faithfully executed.”

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“Any subordinate who enforces federal law must be accountable to it,” Yoo said.

At this stage, the Department of Justice has not taken any of the US attorney cases to the Supreme Court. Habba’s case is the most advanced of these, and a spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on whether the Justice Department would appeal the decision.