Judge orders DOJ to reinstate former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, daughter of ex-FBI director

A federal judge ruled Monday that former Assistant United States Attorney Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was “unlawfully terminated” and ordered that she be reinstated. The Justice Department’s abrupt firing of Comey in July 2025 violated the Constitution’s separation of powers and her Fifth Amendment due process and statutory rights, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman found. The Trump administration’s assertion that it can fire career prosecutors at will would “unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system,” the judge wrote. He granted Comey back pay effective from the date of her termination through Dec. 20, 2025, when she began a new job. A spokesperson for the Justice Department said DOJ “disagrees with this decision and will appeal in due course.” In a joint statement, Comey’s attorneys Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan said that “this decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law.” They added that the “hard-earned victory belongs to Ms. Comey, to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law.” Comey had worked on a number of high-profile cases in the Southern District of New York, including the prosecutions of disgraced music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, former Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. Comey filed suit in September 2025, alleging the Trump administration provided “no legitimate explanation” for firing her after almost 10 years of service, and that it had only done so because of President Donald Trump’s “well-known and longstanding vendetta against James Comey, whom he fired as FBI Director in 2017.” Maurene Comey said the only thing she was told about her firing from her boss was that it “came from Washington.” The Justice Department later said in a court filing that she was removed at the direction of then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. The judge found Bondi did not follow the law when she fired Comey, depriving Comey of her rights to due process. “Congress granted the Attorney General power to remove Comey,” the judge wrote, but “Congress imposed limits on that power — limits that, even Defendants concede, were violated in Comey’s case.” Among DOJ’s arguments were that Bondi had the authority to fire Comey “at will” and for no reason at all, and that Congress does not have the authority to put limits on that authority. Furman roundly rejected those arguments. DOJ has staked out a “sweeping and unprecedented theory of executive authority,” he wrote, and its position “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.” The Trump administration has routinely fired career federal prosecutors along with FBI employees, particularly focusing on individuals involved in prior investigations of Trump or with the massive investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Furman seemed to take note of those firings while declaring Comey’s firing unlawful. “Defendants invented a new and expansive theory of executive power. And they have also utilized that theory to remove other Executive Branch employees who have long held protections from removal,” he wrote, adding the declaration should “serve a useful purpose in clarifying or settling the legal issues involved.” The administration is also continuing to push forward with a federal criminal case brought against Comey’s father over a photo of seashells that it contends amounted to a threat against Trump. The seashells case has been delayed until at least early 2027 as a judge weighs whether to dismiss it. James Comey’s team has argued the case is a product of Trump’s retribution campaign rather than a good faith application of federal law and that “dictionaries, context, precedent, and common sense” show the seashells photo was not a true threat.