The federal judge who ruled that the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal workers were illegal says the official who ordered the firings must testify at a hearing this week or face sanctions.

The Justice Department told a federal judge on Tuesday that the acting head of the Office of Personnel Management won’t testify at a hearing later this week in a major case challenging the government’s efforts to cull the federal workforce,

The Trump administration said Monday that an official who was ruled to have ordered the firings of thousands of probationary federal employees — an order the administration says he never gave — should not have to testify at a hearing scheduled Thursday by a judge in San Francisco.

Experts flagged an eyebrow-raising decision from the Trump administration in which it appeared to accept a court loss rather than have its head of the Office of Personnel Management testify. President Donald Trump's administration is in court over the mass firing of probationary employees in the federal government who are new to the position.