One week after the Third Circuit, the President's former personal lawyer resigns the New Jersey U.S. Attorney post she was found to be holding unlawfully.

The President’s former personal lawyer, on Monday, resigned the post of acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. The resignation came eight days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in a thirty-two-page opinion, upheld the lower court’s determination that her continued service in the position violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

The sequence is worth recording. She was nominated in March. The Senate Judiciary Committee declined to advance the nomination. The administration declined to withdraw it. The interim period, on the lower-court calendar, expired. The district judges in Newark, exercising the authority Congress gave them by statute, designated a different acting U.S. Attorney. The administration removed that designee and reinstalled the original nominee, this time titled differently. The district court ruled the reinstallation unlawful. The Third Circuit, on appeal, affirmed.

The resignation letter, on the record, attributes the decision to the wishes of the President. It does not concede the legal point. The Department of Justice’s filings did not concede the legal point. The opinion of the Third Circuit, which is the legal point, stands.

The vacancy is now, on Monday evening, an unfilled vacancy. The administration’s communicated plan is to nominate a new candidate and seek Senate confirmation. The Senate’s calendar, by Tuesday morning, did not contain a confirmation hearing on the matter. The acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, as of this writing, is the deputy who was there before the President’s former personal lawyer arrived in March.

A serious country, when its appellate courts find a U.S. Attorney appointment unlawful, expects the executive branch to comply by the same Friday. This compliance, by record, took eight days. The eight days is the part that bears noting. The eight days is what the maneuver was for.

Calmly documenting the decline.