Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump listens as Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake speaks at a campaign rally at the Findlay Toyota Arena Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in Prescott Valley, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
The actions that Kari Lake took from July to November 2025 while claiming the authority of acting CEO for the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) are "void" because she was not lawfully serving, a federal judge ruled over the weekend in a win for hundreds of fired employees.
Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a conservative judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, repeatedly cited the DOJ's losses in court for its interim or acting U.S. attorney appointments, ruling Saturday that the Trump administration's move to install Lake at the top of the USAGM ran afoul of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA).
Lake, no stranger to court losses herself, has been sued practically since President Donald Trump, at the start of his second term, began "dismantling by decree" the Voice of America (VOA) and other federally-funded global media organizations. Former VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara's lawsuit was one such case against the senior adviser, deputy CEO, and acting CEO.
In the ruling, Lamberth first cited another judge's January decision to quash grand jury subpoenas issued to New York Attorney General Letitia James' office.
John Sarcone claimed to be the acting U.S. attorney — through his role as first assistant U.S. attorney — and a special attorney wielding U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's supervisory authority when he subpoenaed James' office for documents on her civil fraud lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his family business and on her lawsuit against the NRA. Like many other Bondi non-Senate-confirmed temporary appointees, Sarcone was eventually found to have been unlawfully appointed and disqualified from "any further involvement in prosecuting or supervising the instant investigations, regardless of his title." Here, the remedy was rendering the subpoenas "invalid."
Lamberth's remedy for Lake was to invalidate her actions — mass firings included — during the time period she claimed authority she did not possess.
"As a consequence, any actions taken by Lake during her asserted tenure as acting CEO between July 31 and November 19, 2025, including but not limited to the August 29 reduction-in-force effort, or actions taken pursuant to the March or July delegations of CEO authority, are void," the judge wrote.
In support of his conclusion, Lamberth pointed to both the DOJ's failure to defend the appointment of Alina Habba as acting U.S. attorney and Sarcone's loss.
Habba was the interim U.S. attorney in New Jersey into the summer, when her temporary stint was set to expire. Rather than sitting idly by as the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey appointed Habba's first assistant, Desiree Grace, to lead the U.S. Attorney's Office, Habba resigned, Grace was fired, and Bondi replaced Grace with Habba as a special attorney and first assistant, elevating Habba once again to the top role.
Ultimately, a judge ruled and a panel affirmed that Habba could not lawfully be the acting U.S. attorney under the FVRA because she was not the first assistant when the vacancy arose. The same fate befell Lake, not in place as the second-in-command when ex-acting CEO Victor Morales tried to "transform Lake into the CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media in all but name."
"Agreeing with other judicial decisions that have addressed this question, the Court concludes that Lake's argument is inconsistent with the text and structure of the Vacancies Act," Lamberth said. "Instead, subsection (a)(1) applies only to a first assistant who occupies that position at the time the vacancy occurs. Because Lake was not first assistant at the time of the vacancy, she lacks authority to serve as the acting CEO."
Nor could Lake's recycling of the DOJ's failed complaint about "upend[ing] the functioning of the Executive Branch" persuade Lamberth to do "violence" to the Constitution, he added.
"Allowing the President to circumvent Congress's carefully crafted limitations in this way," Lamberth said, would make a "vestigial surplusage" of the statute and "the advice-and-consent requirement" for principal officers. "The Court declines Lake's invitation to do such violence to the statutory and constitutional scheme."
Lake reportedly reacted to the ruling by calling Lamberth an "activist judge."
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