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“On the first factor, the government has satisfied its burden,” the judges wrote. “[T]he Constitution prohibits even ‘modest restrictions’ on the President’s power to remove the head of an agency with a single top officer.”
They continued, emphasizing that “[T]he President’s power to remove ‘executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed’ may not be regulated by Congress or reviewed by the courts.”
This decision dealt a massive blow to Dellinger, who had fought tooth and nail to prevent the court from issuing a ruling. The implications of this verdict extend beyond Dellinger’s case, potentially affecting similar legal battles involving Cathy Harris and Gwynne Wilcox.
Then, on Tuesday, in a revealing interview with Mediaite founder Dan Abrams, Dellinger admitted that he had been planning to file a lawsuit to reinstate a staggering 200,000 probationary employees who had been fired under President Trump.
“I knew that as soon as I was out, the independence of the office was erased. And so the idea of trying to come back six months later or a year later and pick up the pieces just didn’t seem realistic to me. So I decided to fold,” Dellinger confessed.
The former special counsel then dropped a bombshell: “It killed me because I was on the verge, you know, this hasn’t been made public, but I’m happy to tell you and your audience, I would have gone in last Thursday or Friday on behalf of all 200,000 probationary employees who I think have been wrongfully fired.”
This revelation exposes just how far Dellinger was willing to go in order to undo Trump-era policies. Before the court ruled against him, Dellinger had already managed to reinstate 6,000 probationary employees—something he boasted about during the interview.
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“Last Wednesday, I got relief for 6,000 of them, and then I got ousted. But I was ready to go in for all of them, and it would have been the right thing to do. I think I would have got the court to rule for me, the, the board. And so I’m always going to be frustrated that I didn’t get to, to really go to bat for a couple hundred thousand employees,” he said.
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Dellinger’s comments lay bare the scale of the political war being waged in the courts. Had the D.C. Circuit not stepped in, he was prepared to go all the way to reinstate thousands of employees, fundamentally altering the federal workforce. But now, with the court’s ruling, his crusade has been cut short.
This latest ruling underscores the power of the presidency and the constitutional limits on bureaucratic overreach. While Dellinger’s ambitions may have been thwarted for now, this battle over executive authority is far from over.
