Appeals court allows Trump to remove head of federal watchdog agency for now

A federal appeals court is allowing President Donald Trump to remove the head of a government watchdog agency while a legal challenge to his firing plays out.

In a brief, unsigned order issued Wednesday afternoon, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by the Trump administration to put on hold a lower-court ruling that said Trump’s firing of Hampton Dellinger was unlawful. That ruling said Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, was entitled to stay at his post.

“This order gives effect to the removal of appellee from his position as Special Counsel of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel,” the appeals court said in its order Wednesday. “Appellants have satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending appeal.”

The appeals court said it would expedite its review of the lower-court ruling.

It’s possible that Dellinger will appeal the court’s order to the US Supreme Court on an emergency basis. The case has already gone to the high court once before. CNN has reached out to Dellinger’s office for comment.

The court’s order is the latest dramatic development in Dellinger’s ongoing fight to keep his job after Trump moved to fire him in early February. In an earlier episode of legal wrangling, Dellinger was able to stay on the job while a federal judge in Washington, DC, considered his challenge to his ousting.

In a major ruling issued last Saturday, that judge – Amy Berman Jackson – rejected Trump’s argument that the federal law saying the special counsel can be removed “only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” is unconstitutional.

“The special counsel’s job is to look into and expose unethical or unlawful practices directed at federal civil servants, and to help ensure that whistleblowers who disclose fraud, waste, and abuse on the part of government agencies can do so without suffering reprisals,” Jackson wrote. “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.”

Earlier in the legal proceedings, Trump asked the Supreme Court to step in on his behalf, but the high court blocked his effort to immediately fire Dellinger – deciding to wait for lower courts to weigh in on the legality of the dismissal.

Dellinger was positioned to be a significant independent official in the government whom federal civil servants could go to as whistleblowers and have some protection from retaliation. Typically a relatively low-profile but important job in the federal workforce, the Office of the Special Counsel is taking on new significance in Trump’s era of removing government employees after considering their political loyalties.

The OSC is unrelated to special counsels like Jack Smith or Robert Mueller who are appointed to oversee politically sensitive Justice Department investigations.

Following Jackson’s ruling, Trump, represented by the Justice Department, quickly pressed the DC Circuit to put the order on hold, arguing that the Constitution “empowers the President to remove sole agency heads, such as the Special Counsel, at will.”

But attorneys for Dellinger urged the intermediate court to reject the administration’s request and to review the merits of the case in the ordinary course.

The appeals court, they wrote in a filing, “should reserve these weighty issues for full deliberation and maintain stability and continuity at OSC in the interim.”