Ousted head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) Hampton Dellinger revealed he was preparing a lawsuit to “go to bat” for 200,000 probationary government employees who were laid off by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) before he was fired himself by President Donald Trump.
Dellinger, who was appointed by President Joe Biden to a five-year term, was fired last Wednesday, having dropped the legal battle against his own dismissal just hours after a three-judge panel granted the administration’s request to lift a lower court order that had temporarily kept him in his role.
The lower court had ruled in Dellinger’s favor, arguing that he could only be removed for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” but the appellate court’s intervention effectively sidelined that argument, giving Trump free rein to install a new special counsel more aligned with his administration.
Speaking to Mediaite founder Dan Abrams and explaining why he abandoned the case against his firing, Dellinger revealed that in the days before his ouster he was preparing a lawsuit to challenge the mass layoffs of federal employees by DOGE. Dellinger said:
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.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.Last Wednesday, I got relief for 6000 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.
Dellinger continued to explain how he would have likely won that case having tested the premise of his argument, first on behalf of six employees and then, last week, on behalf of 6,000 employees – with the Merit Systems Protection Board ruling in his favor. He added:
When I saw these mass layoffs happening, first, it is important to know, Dan, that I recognize the president gets to reorganize the executive branch. And of course, Congress can shrink government whenever they want through the power of the purse. But they’re just rules for how you’re supposed to go about it. So you’ve got these risk reduction and force rules. Or if some individuals are not doing their job,
they can be tossed at any time. But this president and DOGE picked door number three, which are these mass layoffs not done according to the RRIF [Registered Retirement Income Fund] rules and not done based on individual performance.So I first went into the board that would hear the cases I bring, called the Merit Systems Protection Board. Two weeks ago, I went in on behalf of six employees, and the board ruled for me the next week. Last week I went on behalf of 6000 because it’s the same legal argument: these folks have been fired in mass with no adherence to the law. And so I was taking that step by step approach, careful about the facts and the law. And I think I had the basis to go in for everyone who had been unlawfully terminated.
Watch above via YouTube.