President Donald Trump has the constitutional authority to fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys, even if judges legally appointed them, according to former Justice Department official John Yoo, who said the Constitution gives the president broad removal power over executive branch officers.

«Otherwise, you could have U.S. attorneys who are enforcing federal law differently than the president would, and it’s the president who all of us in the country elect and to whom the president is accountable,» Yoo told Fox News Digital in an interview.

Trump exercised that power this week by terminating Donald Kinsella just hours after federal judges in the Northern District of New York voted to install him to fill the vacancy left by Trump appointee John Sarcone, whose temporary term had expired. 

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed the move in a fiery social media post, declaring that judges «don’t pick» U.S. attorneys and thrusting the fight deeper into a constitutional dispute over who ultimately controls them.

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At the center of the most recent dispute is a law that allows federal courts to appoint temporary U.S. attorneys when a presidential nominee has not been confirmed by the Senate and an acting official’s term has expired. Blanche suggested the court’s move to fill a U.S. attorney vacancy was unconstitutional, a comment that comes as the DOJ appeals Judge Lorna Schofield’s decision last month to disqualify Sarcone over his expired tenure.

But Yoo, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley, said both that the judges’ actions were legal due to a «quirk» in the law and that the president still has authority to fire Kinsella.

«No matter how an executive officer is appointed … none of these positions under the Constitution have any specific way to remove the officers, and so the president can remove all officers in the executive branch, particularly all officers in the Justice Department,» Yoo said.

Yoo said the Constitution lays out detailed processes for appointing U.S. attorneys but is «silent» on how they are removed.

«It has elaborate procedures … about how you appoint them to office. It doesn’t actually discuss at all how you remove them from office,» Yoo said, referencing the complex federal vacancy laws that govern how interim and acting U.S. attorneys are appointed.

John A. Sarcone III April 28, 2025, in the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the James T. Foley Federal Courthouse in Albany, N.Y.  (Will Waldron/Albany Times Union via Getty Images)

He noted that existing law and Supreme Court precedent have long given the president the ultimate power to fire inferior officers in the executive branch, meaning an official like the attorney general cannot remove the appointees chosen by the courts, such as Kinsella, but Trump can.

Kinsella did not respond to a request for comment on his termination.

Under the law, U.S. attorneys are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But if the Senate does not act, the president can install a temporary U.S. attorney for a limited period, typically 120 days. If that term expires without confirmation of a nominee, the law gives the district court’s judges the power to appoint a replacement to avoid a vacancy in the office.

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Trump, for his part, has struggled to secure Senate confirmations of his U.S. attorney nominees in blue states, where the upper chamber’s blue slip tradition has meant that home state senators must greenlight his nominees. 

His interim appointees in these states, including New York, California, Nevada, New Jersey and Virginia, have faced legal setbacks as federal judges have uniformly found that Trump cannot repeatedly reappoint the same person to consecutive temporary terms.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has ruled out approving any of Trump’s nominees in New York, for example. After Trump fired Kinsella, a veteran federal prosecutor, Schumer said in a statement the president wanted an unqualified «political loyalist» in office. 

Alina Habba speaks to members of the media outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 24, 2025. (Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

«Everyone knows Trump only cares about one quality in a U.S. Attorney — complete political subservience,» Schumer said.

In New Jersey, Trump quickly fired a court-appointed U.S. attorney after a lower court found Alina Habba’s temporary term had expired. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit upheld the lower court’s finding that Habba was unlawfully serving.

In the Eastern District of Virginia, the top prosecutor’s role also remains in limbo as the DOJ appeals a judge’s decision to disqualify Lindsey Halligan, who brought high-profile indictments against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. The judge tossed those cases, finding Halligan was improperly appointed.

The Trump DOJ used a variety of loopholes in the law to install Sarcone, Habba, Halligan and others, and has argued in appeals that the judges disqualifying them — and replacing them with U.S. attorneys of the court’s choosing — were misreading the law.

«It is important that a DOJ component is overseen by someone who has the support of the Executive Branch, and that a U.S. Attorney’s Office can continue to function even when there is no Senate-confirmed or interim U.S. Attorney,» DOJ attorneys wrote in court papers in Habba’s case.

Yoo signaled that the courts were right to honor the statutory time constraints on acting and interm tenures, but he reiterated that Trump had sole removal power.

From the founding, he said, officers who enforce federal law have been removable at will by the president under Article II of the Constitution and the take care clause, the duty to «take care that the laws be faithfully executed.»

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«Any subordinates who are carrying out federal law have to be accountable to him,» Yoo said.

The DOJ has not at this stage elevated any of the U.S. attorney cases to the Supreme Court. Habba’s case is the furthest along, and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on whether the DOJ would appeal that decision.

A man who had recently been released from prison on a terrorism charge was shot and killed by a police officer after he allegedly tried to attack another officer with a knife and scissors near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris Friday.

The incident happened near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the ceremony for relighting the eternal flame, which is carried out nightly.

The unidentified man, who is a French national born in 1978, allegedly tried to attack an officer guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and was shot by another officer.

He died of his wounds at a hospital, the French counterterrorism prosecutor’s office said.

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He was sentenced to 17 years in prison in Brussels in 2013 on a terrorist-related offense of attempted murder of three police officers in Belgium and had just been released in December.

The man served 12 years in prison and was placed under police supervision with routine checks, the French prosecution office said.

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The French counterterrorism prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation into the man related to his ties to a «terrorist enterprise» before his death.

French President Emmanuel Macron visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arc de Triomphe in 2021.  ( Ludovic Marin/Pool via Reuters)

The man was held in a Belgian prison until 2015, when he was transferred to France and released on Christmas Eve.

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The Arc de Triomphe was closed to guests after the incident, which had no other reported injuries.

The man was killed in the incident.  (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva, File)

The Arc de Triomphe, at the end of the Champs-Élysées, is one of Paris and Europe’s most popular sights, and millions of tourists visit the monument in the heart of the French capital each year.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Europa y Estados Unidos miden este fin de semana la profundidad de la fosa atlántica que Donald Trump abrió con su amenaza de tomar por la fuerza la isla danesa de Groenlandia y lanzando una guerra comercial contra los europeos.

Los principales dirigentes de la Unión Europea se dan cita desde este viernes y hasta el domingo en la Conferencia de Seguridad de Múnich, un evento que lleva décadas celebrándose en la ciudad bávara y que ha ganado importancia desde el ataque ruso a Ucrania y la vuelta del magnate republicano a la Casa Blanca.

El año pasado, el vicepresidente estadounidense JD Vance dejó estupefactos a los europeos con un discurso de tintes racistas en el que los acusaba de permitir inmigración sin control y de evitar con formas no democráticas que los partidos de ultraderecha, que son los que quieren destruir la Unión Europea, llegaran al poder.

La situación cambió. Los europeos ya no se verán sorprendidos. Y Washington debería bajar al menos el tono retórico, aunque en el fondo no cambie su discurso, porque en Múnich se espera este sábado al secretario de Estado Marco Rubio, más diplomático que Vance. También porque la relación con Estados Unidos no ha hecho más que deteriorarse entre amenazas.

La última pedrada estadounidense fue la de enviar de gira a Europa a la número dos de Rubio para contactar con centros de pensamiento que ayuden a los partidos ultraderechistas a cambio de financiación estadounidense.

La reunión de Múnich empezó con Alemania dejando claro que la relación está en cuidados intensivos. El jefe de gobierno Friedrich Merz, anfitrión, abrió las jornadas pidiendo trabajar para mantener la relación con Washington: “No me convence cuando se pide que Europa renuncie a Estados Unidos como aliado”. “Juntos somos más fuertes”, añadió.

Pero Merz también hace un análisis realista: “El viejo orden mundial ya no existe”. El alemán pide una “refundación” de la OTAN que dé más peso a los europeos. Y anunció, como ya se había comunicado hace semanas, que está negociando con Francia que el arma nuclear francesa sea el paraguas de seguridad de la Unión Europea.

Marco Rubio, en unas cortas declaraciones a la prensa después de reunirse con su homólogo chino, vino a darle la razón a Merz: “El viejo mundo ha desaparecido. Vivimos en una nueva era geopolítica, y exigirá de todos nosotros que reexaminemos cómo serán las cosas y cuál será nuestro papel”. Rubio aprovecha esta visita para visitar a los dos dirigentes más a la ultraderecha ahora mismo, dos aliados de Moscú, “dos caballos de Troya”, como dice un diplomático escandinavo: el húngaro Viktor Orban y el eslovaco Robert Fico.

El presidente Emmanuel Macron cerró la primera jornada diciendo que “Europa tiene que convertirse en una potencia geopolítica. Tenemos que reducir nuestras dependencias a través de políticas que den preferencia a lo europeo. Y tiene que ser para la inteligencia artificial, la computación en nube, los minerales críticos, las tecnologías limpias, las industrias de defensa y el diseño de nuestros armamentos. En cualquier sector en el que tengamos sobre dependencias, tenemos que eliminar riesgos a nuestro modelo y apoyar la preferencia europea”. Macron apunta al “Buy European” que los gobiernos del bloque están ultimando.

El francés también trató del arma nuclear para decir que dará “más detalles” sobre cómo el arma francesa puede contribuir a la seguridad europea durante un futuro discurso sobre la doctrina nuclear francesa.

Macron no siguió los pasos de Merz defendiendo la importancia de la relación entre Europa y Estados Unidos. El francés, que es el único líder que en los últimos años ha enviado un emisario a Moscú, dijo que Europa no debe “ceder ante Rusia, sino incrementar la presión”. Y que los europeos, también los de fuera de la Unión Europea, deben crear una nueva arquitectura de seguridad para el continente. Es su forma diplomática de rechazar que sean actores ajenos a Europa, como los estadounidenses, los que fijen los marcos del futuro europeo.

Múnich sirve para medir el estado de la relación y, escuchando a los europeos, se para confirmar si ya despertaron al nuevo mundo sin el aliado tradicional estadounidense. La situación en Múnich, según fuentes de la Comisión Europea y de un gobierno que espera pocas amabilidades desde Washington, será diferente: la misma desconfianza, pero también una posición europea más clara a la hora de defender sus intereses. Si en Davos el portavoz de la resistencia contra Donald Trump fue el primer ministro canadiense Mark Carney, en Múnich se espera escuchar ya a los principales dirigentes europeos con discursos que rechacen las políticas estadounidenses. Merz y Macron fueron conciliadores. Este sábado aparecerán el británico Keir Starmer y el español Pedro Sánchez.

Europa también perdió el miedo en otros asuntos. Aunque sigue dependiendo en parte de Estados Unidos para su defensa, ha dado pasos de gigante para recortar esa dependencia. Desde el año pasado los europeos sostienen sin un dólar de Washington el esfuerzo de guerra ucraniano y la financiación de su economía. Las industrias militares europeas despertaron y están aumentando rápidamente su producción. El bloque, además, disparó el gasto militar.

Los europeos argumentan que la ruptura no es circunstancial, que la relación no volverá a ser la misma después de Trump. Porque Trump, y lo que Europa entiende que es una deriva ultraderechista del Partido Republicano, no es una circunstancia puntual y puede volver a ocurrir. El cambio es estructural y no es solamente que Europa esté ante un líder imprevisible, brabucón y que insulta, sino ante una transformación profunda en la forma en que Estados Unidos se mueve en el mundo y el respeto que tiene al Derecho Internacional y al multilateralismo.

Los europeos intentan contener daños. Por eso lanzaron maniobras militares en el Ártico, para mostrar a Trump que se preocupan por la seguridad de Groenlandia. Pero no van a ceder en todo, por eso siguen con su avance contra las plataformas tecnológicas de los amigos de Trump y que trabajan contra la Unión Europea.