Wrathful Trump's blitz to dump judge who blocked his election plot crashes into a wall

President Donald Trump has failed in his attempt to force a federal judge to recuse himself after a ruling against one of the president's plans to "disrupt" elections, court records and reports show.

U.S. District Judge Stanley A. Bastian, the chief district judge of the Eastern District of Washington and an appointee of former President Barack Obama, denied Trump's motion to remove him from the case on July 30. The case centers on Trump's decision to fire a court-appointed U.S. attorney less than an hour after he was sworn in. Bastian has repeatedly ruled against Trump, including in a case that would have impacted the 2020 election.

In June, the courts appointed Roger Rogoff, a former King County Superior Court judge, to lead the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle on July 15, under a federal law that allows district courts to fill vacant prosecutor positions when the White House fails to send a nominee to the Senate. Trump fired him the same day.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had made the administration's intentions clear months earlier. In March, before Rogoff was even selected, Blanche wrote on X that court candidates "do not have the support of POTUS, and I expect they will suffer the same fate as others have when judges ignore Article II."

After being sworn in at 7:40 a.m., Rogoff went to the U.S. Attorney's Office and waited in the lobby to meet Charles Neil Floyd, the first assistant U.S. attorney whose interim term had expired in February, according to the complaint.

A termination email arrived before the meeting ever happened, the complaint says.

"District court judges can appoint a temporary U.S. Attorney, and POTUS can fire them. WDWA judges abandoned the time-honored process of consultation with the administration so that the selected U.S. Attorney is qualified to serve in the administration. Roger Rogoff has been fired by the President," Blanche wrote on X that evening.

Rogoff sued on July 21, arguing the firing was unconstitutional. The law allows him to serve until a Senate-confirmed successor takes office — and Trump has not nominated anyone. "The President cannot grant himself the authority to make those interim appointments instead, nor can he rewrite [the law] to require presidential approval of the district court's choice," the complaint said.

Trump's Justice Department then filed a motion to push Bastian off the case, court records show, arguing the original judge should not have assigned it to him, and that his role as the district's sole visiting judge created an appearance of partiality.

Bastian denied both arguments on July 30.

"The Court took an oath to 'administer justice without respect to persons' and to 'faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all duties incumbent upon it' and it intends to fully honor that oath," the order said.

In September 2020, Bastian issued a nationwide injunction blocking Trump's sweeping changes to the U.S. Postal Service — changes that slowed mail delivery in the months before the presidential election.

Former President Barack Obama appointed Bastian to the federal bench in 2014.

"It is easy to conclude that the recent Postal Service's changes is an intentional effort on the part of the current Administration to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state, and federal elections," Bastian wrote in his 2020 order.

In 2019, Bastian blocked Trump's Title X funding rule, which would have stripped federal money from health clinics that referred patients for abortions. He also struck down the administration's conscience protection rule, which would have let health care workers refuse to treat patients on religious or moral grounds — calling it "discrimination by another name" from the bench.

The government's response to Rogoff's motion for a preliminary injunction, which would reinstate him while the case proceeds, is due Aug. 11.