Whistleblower Chief Trump Fired Ends Fight After Court Loss (1)

The head of an independent whistleblower agency is ending his legal fight over President Donald Trump’s decision to fire him after a federal appeals court in Washington allowed the removal to take effect while he pressed his case.

Hampton Dellinger, who led the Office of Special Counsel, announced his decision in a statement on Thursday. He wrote that he disagreed with the latest order by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit but “will abide by it.”

Dellinger said he was giving up the fight because he believed the court’s decision to side with the administration meant his odds of ultimately winning in the US Supreme Court were “long.” In the meantime, the job would be filled by someone “totally beholden to the president,” he said.

“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,” Dellinger wrote. His announcement was reported earlier by the Associated Press.

Spokespeople for the White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read More: Trump Cleared to Oust Head of Whistleblower Office for Now

The office that Dellinger led isn’t connected to Special Counsel Jack Smith, the similarly titled lawyer who pressed two criminal prosecutions of Trump during Joe Biden’s presidency. The Office of Special Counsel is tasked with protecting federal workers from prohibited employment practices, particularly reprisals for whistleblowing. The agency can investigate alleged wrongdoing and file petitions on behalf of workers at the Merit Systems Protection Board but can’t impose sanctions or sue other government bodies.

Dellinger was nominated by Biden and confirmed by the US Senate in February 2024 for a five-year term. He wrote in his statement that Thursday would have marked his one-year anniversary. He is among several independent agency officials who sued Trump over his push to oust them, including the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

The fight is part of a broader Trump effort to seize control of independent federal agencies. Dellinger underscored the dispute’s significance as he continued to challenge the administration’s firing of federal workers in recent weeks.

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Earlier this week, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington sided with Dellinger, rulinghis firing was illegal. The Justice Department appealed and asked the DC Circuit for an immediate order lifting the effect of Jackson’s ruling while the fight went forward. The appeal was assigned to a three-judge panel comprised of one Democratic appointee and two Republicans, including one by Trump.

On Wednesday, the panel granted the administration’s request. No dissent was indicated in the appeals court order. It wasn’t a final ruling on the merits of the case, but meant that Dellinger couldn’t continue serving in his job while the fight went forward.

Jackson previously entered a temporary order halting Dellinger’s removal and the administration tried to challenge that. The Supreme Court last month hinted at a sharp divide in the case when it declined to act on Trump’s bid to fire Dellinger at that point. Two liberal justices said they would have rejected Trump’s request and two conservatives said they would have let him oust the special counsel.

Congress created several independent executive branch positions decades ago in order to shield them from politics, though presidents were legally permitted to fire them for cause. At issue is whether it was constitutional for Congress to grant such a measure of independence.

In his statement, Dellinger praised the agency’s work and said that federal workers “deserve better, much better, than your recent unfair and unlawful treatment from too many parts of the United States government.” He said that the Biden administration never tried to interfere with his work, “even when some disagreed with it.”

“My fight to stay on the job was not for me, but rather for the ideal that OSC should be as Congress intended: an independent watchdog and a safe, trustworthy place for whistleblowers to report wrongdoing and be protected from retaliation,” he said.

The case is Dellinger v. Bessent, 25-cv-385, US District Court, District of Columbia.

(Updated with additional information about the case, Dellinger comments.)

--With assistance from Greg Stohr.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net;
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman, Steve Stroth

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