Fired special counsel says he was preparing push to return all fired probationary employees to their job
Former special counsel Hampton Dellinger said he was planning to pursue legal action to restore all fired probationary workers back to their posts before a court failed to keep him in his role.
Dellinger was fired by President Trump in February, but a lower court returned him to his job as he continued with legal arguments that he was entitled to remain in his job for the entirety of his five-year term.
That ended with an appeals court ruling barring him from staying on the job as the case continued, prompting Dellinger to end his suit.
“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,” he told Mediaite founder Dan Abrams.
Dellinger scored a victory before the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which temporarily returned fired probationary workers at six agencies back to their jobs.
And in another ruling spurred by action from Dellinger, the MSPB also allowed nearly 6,000 workers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be temporarily returned to their jobs.
“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.”
Dellinger said he believed he would have prevailed in that battle.
“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.
The Office of Personnel Management last month ordered agencies to fire probationary employees — those hired or promoted within the last two years, depending on the agency.
In earlier statements, Dellinger had indicated he was weighing broader actions to protect probationary workers.
In his filings before the MSPB, Dellinger argued that the Trump administration engaged in “profited personnel practices,” as probationary workers must still be fired for cause.
While workers were told they were being fired for performance reasons, Dellinger said the mass firings made clear they did not assess each employee. Any mass layoffs require the government to undergo a process known as a reduction in force.
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