Trump administration illegally fired federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, judge rules

The Trump administration illegally fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of ex-FBI Director and Trump critic James Comey, as a Justice Department prosecutor, a judge ruled Monday, sharply rebuking the administration’s authority to terminate career federal employees it dislikes.

The ruling is tailored to Maurene Comey but its import stretches beyond her case, repudiating the claim of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration that the Constitution permits such firings for any reason. Administration officials have cited that belief repeatedly in a sweeping purge of the federal work force.

Comey, an assistant U.S. attorney for a decade, was fired in July 2025 despite her work on some of the nation’s highest-profile cases and consistently receiving “the highest accolades from supervisors and peers alike,” Judge Jesse M. Furman found.

Former FBI chief James Comey appears in court over charges of making threats against Trump

After her firing, Comey sued the Justice Department and others, saying her termination violated the constitutional separation of powers, the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

She asserted that she was fired because she was the daughter of James Comey, whom Trump has long viewed as an enemy, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both, the judge noted.

Furman rejected the government’s claim that Comey could be fired because federal prosecutors exercise the president’s “conclusive and preclusive” powers.

He also said the government’s claim that Congress is barred from regulating the removal of federal prosecutors “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.”

Furman added: “Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.”

The firing violated the separation of powers, the Administrative Procedure Act and her Fifth Amendment due process and statutory rights, the judge ruled. He reserved judgment on Comey’s First Amendment claim pending further arguments, though he said he was inclined to dismiss it because it was largely moot since she is now in private practice and no longer seeks actual reinstatement.

Furman, who was nominated to the bench in 2011 by then-Democratic President Barack Obama, granted Comey retroactive reinstatement and back pay from the date of her firing through Dec. 20 to “make her whole” and ensure that she doesn’t suffer adverse employment consequences for the “unlawful termination.”

In a statement, the Justice Department said it “disagrees with this decision and will appeal in due course.”

Comey’s lawyers, Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan, lauded the ruling.

“This hard-earned victory belongs to Ms. Comey, to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law,” they said in a statement. “As the Court correctly held, to accept the government’s argument about unlimited executive power ‘would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.’ This decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law.”

Comey was fired two weeks after leading the prosecution of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, which ended in a conviction on prostitution-related charges but an acquittal on others. She also worked on the sex trafficking prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who killed himself in jail a month after his arrest in 2019, and Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

The Justice Department during the Trump administration has fired scores of career employees, including prosecutors and FBI agents, who participated in investigations of Trump or who were perceived as opposed to the administration’s agenda. Some of those firings have also resulted in federal lawsuits.

The firing of Maurene Comey was seen as particularly personal, given her father’s longtime adversarial relationship with Trump.

The president fired James Comey as FBI director in May 2017 as the bureau was investigating ties between Russia and the Republican’s successful 2016 campaign for the White House. Trump in the years since has repeatedly called for Comey to be jailed, and his Justice Department has worked with mixed success to make that happen.

An earlier criminal case accusing James Comey of having lied to Congress in 2020 was dismissed by a judge who concluded that the prosecutor who filed the charges was illegally appointed. A separate pending indictment charges the former FBI director with threatening Trump through an Instagram photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47,” a case he has sought to dismiss that some legal experts have greeted with skepticism.