Battle over appointees intensifies as Trump fires court-appointed nominee

president Donald Trump Trump has the constitutional authority to fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys, even if the judges had legally appointed them, according to former Justice Department official John Yoo, who said the Constitution gives the president broad authority to fire executive branch officers.

“Otherwise, you could have U.S. attorneys applying federal law differently than the president, and the president is the one that all of us in the country elect and to whom the president is accountable,” Yu told Fox News Digital in an interview.

Trump exercised that power this week by firing Donald Kinsella just 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 had expired.

Deputy District Attorney Todd Blanche made the move fiery Social media sharingdeclaring that judges “do not choose” U.S. attorneys, pushing the fight deeper into a constitutional dispute over who ultimately controls them.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks alongside President Donald Trump about recent Supreme Court rulings in the White House Briefing Room on June 27, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

At the heart of the latest dispute is a law that allows this Federal courts Appointment of interim US attorneys when a presidential nominee has not been confirmed by the Senate and the acting official’s term has expired. Blanche suggested the court’s move to fill a vacant U.S. attorney position was unconstitutional, a comment that comes as the Justice Department appeals Judge Lorna Schofield’s decision last month to disqualify Sarcone during his expiring term.

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

“No matter how the executive is appointed…none of these positions under the Constitution has any specific way to remove officers, so the president can remove all officials in the executive branch, especially all officials in the Ministry of Justice,” Yu said.

Yu said constitution It presents detailed processes for appointing US attorneys but is “silent” on how they are removed.

“It has detailed procedures… on how to appoint them to their positions. It doesn’t actually discuss at all how to remove them from their positions,” Yu said, referring to complex federal vacancy laws that govern how temporary and serving U.S. attorneys are appointed.

john a. Sarcone III April 28, 2025, in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the James T. Foley Federal Reserve in Albany, New York (Will Waldron/Albany Times-Union via Getty Images)

He noted that current law and Supreme Court precedent have long given the president absolute power to fire lower-ranking officers in the executive branch, meaning an official like the attorney general cannot fire court appointees, like Kinsella, but Trump can.

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

By law, US attorneys are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. But if the Senate doesn’t act, the president can appoint an interim US attorney for a limited period, usually 120 days. If that term expires without the nominee being confirmed, the law gives district court judges the authority to appoint a replacement to avoid a vacancy.

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For his part, Trump has struggled to secure Senate confirmations for his attorney general nominees in blue states, where the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition means that home state senators must give the green light to his nominees.

Temporary appointees in these states, including New York, California, Nevada, New Jersey and Virginia, have faced legal setbacks as federal judges have uniformly found that Trump cannot repeatedly reappoint the same person to consecutive temporary terms.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has ruled out endorsing any of Trump’s nominees in New York, for example. After Trump fired Kinsella, a veteran federal prosecutor, Schumer said in a statement that the president wanted an unqualified “political loyalist” in office.

Alina Habba speaks to members of the media outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 24, 2025. (Samuel Corum/Siba/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Schumer said: “Everyone knows that Trump only cares about one quality in the US attorney general, which is complete political submission.”

In New Jersey, Trump quickly fired a court-appointed US attorney after a lower court found that Alina Haba’s temporary term had expired. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the lower court’s finding that Haba was serving illegally.

In the eastern region VirginiaThe role of the attorney general also remains in limbo, 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’s appointment was inappropriate.

Trump’s Justice Department used a variety of loopholes in the law to appoint Sarcone, Haba, Halligan and others, and said on appeals that the judges who removed them — and replaced them with U.S. attorneys of the court’s choice — were misreading the law.

“It is important that a component of the Department of Justice be overseen by someone who has the support of the executive branch, and that the U.S. Attorney’s Office can continue to function even in the absence of a Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney or interim Attorney General,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in court papers in the Haba case.

Yu noted that the courts were right to respect legal time limits on representation and term limits, but reiterated that Trump has sole impeachment power.

Since the founding, he said, officers who enforce federal law have been removed at will by the president under Article II of the Constitution, the Cares Clause, and the duty “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

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“Any subordinates who enforce federal law must be accountable to it,” Yu said.

The Department of Justice has not at this point taken any of the cases brought by the United States attorneys to the Supreme Court. The Hapa case is the most far-reaching, and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on whether the Justice Department would appeal that decision.