Top government watchdog from NC ends battle to keep job after being fired by Trump
Following a brief legal battle, President Donald Trump was successful in his effort to oust a top government watchdog from North Carolina — a win in the president’s efforts to expand his powers and eliminate independent oversight.
U.S. Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, an official responsible for protecting whistleblowers in the federal government, announced he would end his fight to keep his job after Trump fired him early last month without cause.
His decision came after an appeals court ruled that Trump could remove him while the legal battle continued.
“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 wrote in a statement.
A North Carolina native and former adviser to Gov. Mike Easley, Dellinger led the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency tasked with protecting federal employees from retaliation and enforcing the Hatch Act, which restricts political activity by government employees.
He was appointed to the position by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate last year. In recent weeks, Dellinger has led efforts to protect probationary employees fired by the Trump administration.
Just Wednesday, Dellinger had announced that the Office of Special Counsel secured a temporary pause to the administration’s firing of over 5,000 probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In a court filing, Trump’s lawyers said Dellinger was engaging in a “rogue use of executive authority over the president’s objection.”
Trump has not yet named a replacement for the position, but Dellinger said that the appeals court’s decision would allow the administration to replace him with “someone totally beholden to the president.”
Dellinger initially won his case at the district court level, with U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruling Saturday that Trump did not have the authority to fire him.
“It would be ironic, to say the least, and inimical to the ends furthered by the statute if the special counsel himself could be chilled in his work by fear of arbitrary or partisan removal,” Jackson wrote.
But the Trump administration quickly appealed her ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court, which reversed Jackson’s ruling and said Trump could remove Dellinger while the case proceeded.
The battle appeared poised to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court — potentially setting up a major legal test to Trump’s efforts to expand his presidential powers.
But Dellinger’s decision to end the battle puts an end to that possibility.
“I think my odds of ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court are long,” he said. “Meanwhile, the harm to the agency and those who rely on it caused by a special counsel who is not independent could be immediate, grievous, and, I fear, uncorrectable.”
