Former Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger may have dropped his lawsuit challenging his removal by President Trump, but that did not stop the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from issuing a belated opinion explaining why it granted the Trump Administration's emergency motion for a stay pending appeal in Dellinger v. Bessent.
The per curiam opinion on behalf of Judges Henderson, Millett, and Walker explains that the panel concluded that the Trump Administration was likely to prevail on the merits. This is because, as a single-headed agency, it is hard to distinguish the Office of Special Counsel from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Housing Finance Administration, and thus hard to see how Dellinger could prevail under Seila Law v. CFPB and Collins v. Yellen.
From the opinion:
