The Justice Department said it plans to appeal a federal judge’s decision to temporarily allow the recently fired special counsel Hampton Dellinger, a leader of a government agency overseeing federal corruption, to stay in his role through at least Thursday as a fight over his ouster by President Donald Trump continues.
Dellinger sued Trump and several other White House and administration officials Monday in federal court, seeking a temporary restraining order aimed at unwinding the firing and a declaration from the court that his current replacement should not be recognized as acting special counsel for the Office of Special Counsel (OSC).
The Office of Special Counsel is not connected to the DOJ or the special counsels who criminally investigated Trump. Rather, the OSC is a federal watchdog agency that enforces whistleblower protection laws or the Hatch Act, which limits how government officials engage in partisan political activities.
Dellinger says he was fired on Feb. 7 in a curt email from Sergio Gor, director of presidential personnel at the White House. There was zero justification offered for his termination in the email, according to Dellinger’s attorneys. Existing rules for special counsels at OSC permit them to serve a term to last five years, and Dellinger claims Trump and administration officials blatantly disregarded this and other statutes, including those that state a president can only remove a special counsel from OSC for inefficiency, malfeasance in office or neglect of duty.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was randomly assigned to Dellinger’s case. Late Monday, she briefly heard arguments in her Washington, D.C., courtroom before granting an administrative stay. That ruling allowed Dellinger to remain head of OSC until midnight Thursday while she considered further written arguments. Court records show she instructed Gor and other administration officials to provide a written explanation of their defense and submit it by noon Tuesday.
The judge also reminded the Trump administration that Dellinger cannot be denied access to any OSC resources or materials and that no one else can be recognized as OSC in the interim.
After he was temporarily reinstated, Dellinger told The Associated Press that he was “grateful to have the opportunity to continue leading the Office of Special Counsel and I am resuming my work tonight.”
After the ruling, DOJ officials filed a notice to appeal Jackson’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
According to The AP, before the judge’s decision was even issued, the White House said Dellinger had already been replaced with Doug Collins, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Collins was also tapped on Monday to lead the Office of Government Ethics after Trump abruptly removed David Huitema from that role, too.
Government oversight groups like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told HuffPost Monday that the firings were the latest example of Trump’s push to purge anyone from the government who is “tasked with holding him and his administration accountable to the law and ethical standards.”
Trump has already fired at least 17 inspectors general and several other officials, including the national archivist, a member of the National Labor Relations Board, the head of the Federal Election Commission and several others.
With the aid of Emil Bove, Trump’s former-personal-lawyer-turned acting deputy attorney general of the United States, the president has also purged the Justice Department of prosecutors who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as well as his alleged illegal retention of sensitive and classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago property.
Dellinger was nominated by former President Joe Biden in October 2023 and confirmed to his role by the Senate in February 2024.
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In his lawsuit Monday, he argued that President Jimmy Carter’s signing of the Civil Service Reform Act into law in 1978 to reduce “political manipulation” and better protect government whistleblowers was meant for a moment like this.
The Civil Service Reform Act states that special counsel “may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” and this was further enshrined in 1989, Dellinger argues when Congress beefed up existing whistleblower protections due to continued complaints of federal corruption and retaliation.