Judge: Fed Prosecutor Illegally Fired  10/27 06:19

   

   NEW YORK (AP) -- 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 in a sharp rebuke of 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 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 workforce.

   Comey, an assistant U.S. attorney for a decade, was fired in July 2025 
despite consistently receiving "the highest accolades from supervisors and 
peers alike," Judge Jesse M. Furman found.

   The judge said her firing violated laws passed by Congress that were 
intended to abolish the spoils system, under which newly elected presidents 
regularly purged government workers and replaced them with loyalists.

   Furman's decision didn't address the validity of Comey's claim that she was 
fired because she is the daughter of James Comey, whom Trump has long viewed as 
an enemy.

   Trump 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.

   Hours after Furman's ruling Monday, unsealed court filings showed that the 
Justice Department had quietly brought another criminal case against James 
Comey, accusing him of leaking classified information.

   Furman, who was nominated to the bench in 2011 by then-Democratic President 
Barack Obama, granted Maurene Comey retroactive reinstatement and back pay from 
the date of her firing through Dec. 20, 2025, when she began a new, 
private-sector job.

   In a statement, the Justice Department said it disagreed with this decision 
and would appeal.

   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. "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.

   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.

   In his ruling on Maurene Comey's termination, Furman said the Justice 
Department'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."

   He didn't rule on Comey's claim that her firing violated her free speech 
rights, though he said he was inclined to dismiss it because she is now in 
private practice and no longer seeks reinstatement to her old job.