An Obama-appointed judge has blocked President Trump from firing a court-appointed U.S. attorney in Washington state, a move the White House says undercuts the president’s constitutional authority.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian issued a preliminary injunction reinstating Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington and ordered the Justice Department to treat him as the rightful officeholder.

Fox News Digital reported that the order bars the Trump administration from treating Rogoff as lawfully removed and restores his ability to serve, setting up a direct fight over whether a president can fire a prosecutor first installed by federal judges.

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis did not mince words.

"This is yet another ruling from an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump’s agenda and undermine his constitutional authority. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President,"

The Justice Department’s Rapid Response account said the department disagrees with the decision, plans to seek an immediate stay, and will appeal.

Court-picked prosecutor stays after Trump moved to remove him

Rogoff holds the top federal prosecutor job in the Western District of Washington, the Seattle-centered district at the center of the dispute. He was appointed by federal judges, not by the president. The administration moved to remove him. Bastian’s injunction put him back in place and told the Justice Department to recognize him.

Bastian was first nominated by President Barack Obama in 2013. Critics of the order cast the ruling as judicial control over an executive branch office.

Article III founder and president Mike Davis hammered the decision on social media, calling it another lawless ruling by a Democrat activist judge and arguing that Democrat judges handpicked their own U.S. attorney before the president, through his attorney general, fired him.

"Under Article II of the Constitution, the President clearly has the executive power to fire Justice Department officials,"

Davis also said Bastian created an unnecessary constitutional crisis by ordering the removal of the president’s pick and installing what Davis called a judicial puppet, and he urged the Ninth Circuit, or the Supreme Court, to step in.

One detail drew mockery online: Davis noted that Bastian’s first name was misspelled in the order, missing the “e” in Stanley. An unnamed user joked that a judge misspelling his own name is how you know it’s quality legal work.

Decades of removal authority cut against the injunction

The legal backdrop is not new. In 1926, the Supreme Court held in Myers v. United States that the president generally has constitutional authority to remove executive branch officers. That case centered on President Woodrow Wilson’s firing of a postmaster without Senate consent.

A 1979 Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion went further on prosecutors. It concluded that the president’s statutory authority to remove “each United States attorney” also extends to prosecutors appointed by federal judges.

A 2000 federal appeals court ruling reached the same bottom line: the president has authority to fire a U.S. attorney appointed by federal judges.

Those authorities are the long runway behind the White House’s claim that U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and behind the prediction that Bastian’s order will not be the last word.

Oversight Project litigation vice president Jeff Clark put the constitutional point bluntly.

"The President's power to remove U.S. Attorneys must be unfettered consistent with Article II of the Constitution. Judge Stanley Bastian is wrong here to order Rogoff reinstated. I predict Judge Bastian will eventually be reversed, whether at the Ninth Circuit or by the Supreme Court,"

Holtzman Vogel partner Brian Nieves called it judicial overreach, plain and simple, and said the judiciary does not get to run the executive branch.

Washington is not the only U.S. attorney fight

The Rogoff order lands amid a string of legal battles over Trump-era U.S. attorney appointments. Similar disputes have already played out in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York.

In New Jersey, the administration sought to keep Alina Habba leading the U.S. attorney’s office after her interim term ended. Federal courts rejected that effort. Desiree Grace, the judges’ original appointee in that dispute, did not simply take over the office afterward.

Each of those fights turns on the same structural question now pending in Washington state: who controls the office when judges appoint a prosecutor and a president later moves to remove that person.

Bastian’s preliminary injunction answers that question, for now, in favor of the court-appointed officeholder. The Justice Department has already signaled it will not leave the answer there. It intends to seek a stay and take the case up on appeal.

If the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court applies Myers, the 1979 OLC opinion, and the 2000 appeals ruling the way the administration and its outside allies read them, the order reinstating Rogoff becomes a short chapter rather than the final one.

Presidents hire and fire the prosecutors who enforce federal law for a reason, and a bench that tries to freeze that power will keep running into the same constitutional wall.