Head of federal whistleblower office drops legal battle challenging his firing
Source: CBS News
Updated on: March 6, 2025 / 1:07 PM EST
Washington — Hampton Dellinger, the former head of the office that investigates whistleblower retaliation, has dropped his legal challenge to his firing by President Trump from his role as special counsel. Dellinger's decision to end his legal fight comes hours after a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit cleared the way for Mr. Trump to terminate him as leader of the Office of Special Counsel.
The D.C. Circuit granted a request from the president to halt a lower court order that blocked Dellinger's firing. The judge in that case, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, sided with the former special counsel in his challenge to his removal and said in a ruling Saturday that he must remain in the role. Dellinger's decision to walk away from the case cuts off its path to the Supreme Court, which has in a pair of recent decisions reasserted the president's power to remove executive branch officers at will.
"I'm stopping the fight because, yesterday, circuit court judges reviewing the trial court decision in my favor granted the government's request that I be removed from office while the case continues," Dellinger wrote in a statement obtained by CBS News. "This new ruling means that OSC will be run by someone totally beholden to the president for the months that would pass before I could get a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court."
The ethics watchdog warned that the harm to those dependent on the agency under a future special counsel sympathetic to the Trump administration "could be immediate, grievous, and, I fear, uncorrectable."
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/special-counsel-whistleblower-office-trump-firing-hampton-dellinger/
His type of position is different from the "Boards" with "terms" (like the MSPB or Postal Board of Governors or NLRB).
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