US watchdog agency chief fired by Trump ends lawsuit over removal

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) -The fired head of a federal watchdog agency on Thursday said he was ending his legal battle over U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to remove him from office after a federal appeals court cleared the way for him to do so.

Hampton Dellinger, who had headed the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, in a statement said he was ending his lawsuit in light of Wednesday's court ruling, saying the odds of him ultimately prevailing before the U.S. Supreme Court were long.

The case had marked an early test of the Republican president's ability to rein in independent agencies and replace their leaders as part of his administration's overall efforts to reshape the federal government.

Dellinger's case had previously reached the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first legal battle involving Trump's actions to come before the top U.S. judicial body since his return to the presidency in January.

At that time, the Supreme Court declined to allow Trump to immediately fire Dellinger, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, while a judge who had temporarily blocked his removal weighed whether to issue an injunction.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson did so on March 1, saying allowing Trump the ability to fire Dellinger before his term was over would give the president "a constitutional license to bully officials in the executive branch into doing his will."

But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Wednesday put that decision on hold, and Dellinger was swiftly removed from his post.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Bill Berkrot)