Fired Copyright Director Rips Trump’s Theory of ‘Sweeping’ Power

Recently fired Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter called President Donald Trump’s justification for her ouster “breathtaking and entirely novel” and disputed his argument that executive vacancies law and the Constitution allow him to remove the Library of Congress employee.

Nothing in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, appointments clause, or “take care” clause of the Constitution validate Trump’s “sweeping assertions of power,” Perlmutter said in a reply in support of her bid for a temporary restraining order filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

“Neither law nor common sense” requires the court to “stand idly by ...