Federal Workforce Watchdog Who Was Fired By Trump Drops Legal Fight To Get His Job Back

A federal watchdog for government workers is throwing in the towel in his legal fight against President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire him.

A day after a federal appeals court panel allowed Trump to proceed with his plan to remove Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, Dellinger issued a statement saying he is dropping his lawsuit challenging his dismissal.

“I think my odds of ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court are long,” Dellinger said.

Dellinger was appointed by former President Joe Biden and was in the midst of serving a five-year term as the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency in the executive branch that investigates whistleblower complaints and alleged violations of civil service laws.

His battle to hold on to his post mushroomed into a larger showdown in recent days as he petitioned a civil-service board to block the Trump administration’s efforts to fire thousands of federal workers who are in a probationary status.

On Wednesday, Dellinger won an order reinstating more than 5,000 fired Agriculture Department workers for at least 45 days. He appeared to be moving to seek similar relief for tens of thousands of other fired employees at other federal agencies when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling Wednesday night that allowed Trump’s firing of Dellinger to take effect.

Before the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, Dellinger had won a series of orders from U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson allowing him to remain in his post after Trump first tried to fire him on Feb. 7. Jackson concluded that Trump violated a federal law that limits his ability to fire the special counsel.

The Trump administration fought one of those orders all the way to the Supreme Court, which turned down the Justice Department’s request for relief at that early stage but did not weigh in on the broader legal issue: the president’s power to fire all executive branch officials for any reason, even those who are protected by law from arbitrary termination.

Some legal experts said Dellinger’s case might be a weaker vehicle to challenge Trump’s firing powers than those involving some other executive branch officials whom Trump has tried to fire.

That’s because Dellinger was the singular head of the Office of Special Counsel, while some of the other officials are members of multi-member panels. Courts have traditionally found Congress has more power to shield the heads of multi-member agencies from presidential control.

In his statement Thursday, Dellinger took aim at the D.C. Circuit’s decision that effectively put him out of his post.

“I think the circuit judges erred badly because their willingness to sign off on my ouster — even if presented as possibly temporary — immediately erases the independence Congress provided for my position, a vital protection that has been accepted as lawful for nearly fifty years,” Dellinger said.

As the legal fight over Dellinger continued, DOJ lawyers seized on his advocacy for the fired workers as evidence that he was undermining Trump’s agenda.

As he announced his decision to drop the legal fight, Dellinger stressed his independence and said he’d warned Biden administration officials before taking the job that he would take a non-partisan approach.

“I posed one question before saying yes: ‘you know I can’t and won’t ‘swallow my whistle’, right?” Dellinger said “My point was that I was going to follow and enforce the rules like an honest referee would even if some might perceive it as against the interests of certain individuals including the President.”