Trump administration unlawfully fired Maurene Comey, judge rules
By SANTUL NERKAR
A Manhattan judge ruled earlier this week that Maurene Comey, a former federal prosecutor and the daughter of one of President Donald Trump’s best-known critics, was unlawfully fired last year.
In a 55-page ruling, Judge Jesse M. Furman of U.S. District Court in Manhattan wrote that the Justice Department violated the separation of powers, federal administrative law and Comey’s due process rights when it fired her in July 2025.
At the time of her firing, Comey was a highly regarded trial lawyer for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, handling the prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Sean Combs.
Comey had said there was no possible reason for her firing besides the fact that her father, James Comey, was the director of the FBI, or because of her “perceived political affiliation and beliefs.”
Comey is one of many federal prosecutors who have been fired in Trump’s second term with no reason offered, other than Article II of the Constitution, which broadly outlines presidential powers.
The Justice Department had argued that the attorney general at the time, Pam Bondi, had the authority to fire Comey, citing recent Supreme Court rulings and civil service law. But accepting the Trump administration’s rationale, Furman ruled, “would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this nation’s constitutional system.”
He said that under the separation of powers in the Constitution, laws passed by Congress limit the executive branch’s right to remove assistant U.S. attorneys.
Furman, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, also ruled that Comey is entitled to back pay through December 2025. He did not rule on her accusation that her firing violated the First Amendment in seeking to retaliate against her father’s protected free speech, asking each party to provide additional arguments on that claim.
Comey’s victory could open a path for other fired government workers who are seeking to appeal terminations that the Trump administration has sought to justify by citing Trump’s sweeping presidential powers.
She argued that neither the president nor the attorney general had the authority to fire rank-and-file prosecutors like herself, who are protected under civil service law. The administration overrode congressional law by firing her, she contended.
“This hard-earned victory belongs to Ms. Comey, to all civil servants and to all fighting for the rule of law,” the lawyers for Comey wrote in a statement. The decision “reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances,” they added.
In a statement, the Justice Department said it disagreed with the ruling and would be appealing “in due course.”
Comey’s father, James, was indicted by the Justice Department in September 2025, after Trump demanded retribution for the FBI’s investigation into his campaign’s possible ties to Russia during the 2016 election.
That indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors. To secure it, Trump forced out the U.S. attorney overseeing the investigation, Erik S. Siebert, and appointed Lindsey Halligan, one of the president’s former defense lawyers.
A federal judge dismissed that indictment in November 2025, as well as a separate criminal case against New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding that Halligan was unlawfully appointed.
But in April, James Comey was indicted again, this time in North Carolina, on charges that he had threatened Trump in a social media post. And on Monday, hours after his daughter’s legal triumph, the Justice Department announced new charges against James Comey, accusing him of mishandling national security information that wound up in a 2016 New York Times article.
As a prosecutor, Comey personally handled 11 trials and obtained more than 200 convictions, according to her lawsuit. She supervised units that prosecuted violent and organized crime and public corruption cases, including the bribery prosecution of Bob Menendez, the former Democratic senator from New Jersey.
She was assigned to Epstein’s case in 2019, before the disgraced financier hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell. Comey then led the prosecution of Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking and other charges in 2021.
Comey was fired July 16, 2025, at a time when the Trump administration was battling the public’s frustration over its handling of the release of files related to Epstein. In February, she joined the firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, as a partner in its litigation department. She will remain in that role.
In April, Furman ruled that Comey’s lawsuit could proceed in his court. The Trump administration had argued that her claims first needed to be heard before the Merit Systems Protection Board, an obscure government agency that is meant to protect federal workers from unfair firings.
But the Trump administration has taken pains to bring that board — and other bodies like it — to heel. Early in his second term, Trump fired the board’s chair, Cathy Harris. Harris has contested the termination and appealed to the Supreme Court.
Furman’s ruling could compel the courts to reckon with the status of such boards, which were created by Congress to check the executive branch.
