Trump's effort to fire government watchdog 'unlawful,' judge rules

President Donald Trump’s effort to remove the head of a federal watchdog agency was “unlawful,” a federal judge in Washington, D.C., said Saturday.

The ruling sidelines Trump’s bid to remove Hampton Dellinger as the head of the Office of Special Counsel and is likely to set up a Supreme Court fight.

“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,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote in her Saturday ruling. “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.”

Trump fired Dellinger by email last month as his administration carried out widespread cuts to the federal workforce, including the terminations of nearly two dozen other government watchdogs.

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