A federal judge ruled Monday that the Justice Department unlawfully dismissed Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, from her position as a federal prosecutor in New York.
Comey was abruptly dismissed last July from her role as an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, where she had worked for about a decade and led some of the department’s most closely watched prosecutions – including cases involving Jeffrey Epstein, Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs, and former Senator Robert Menendez.
Comey challenged the dismissal in court, arguing that it breached ‘multiple provisions’ of the Civil Service Reform Act, which protects government employees, including career federal prosecutors, as well as her rights under the First and Fifth Amendments of the US Constitution.
The federal judge handling the case largely sided with her.
In a 55-page ruling issued Monday, US District Judge Jesse M. Furman said Comey’s termination ‘was not authorized by any statute,’ rejecting the Trump administration’s arguments and finding that the firing violated the Civil Service Reform Act, which restricts the circumstances under which federal employees may be removed.
‘Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system,’ Furman wrote.
Then-Assistant US Attorney Maurene Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, is pictured outside federal court before the start of the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial in 2025
President Donald Trump shakes hands with then-FBI Director James Comey in 2017. Trump dismissed Comey that year, before the end of his 10-year FBI tenure
Then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks with Pam Bondi and Trump. A judge found that Comey’s Justice Department dismissal was unlawful; the administration said Bondi ‘directed’ the action and Blanche later ‘ratified’ it
Furman also ordered that Comey be retroactively reinstated and receive back pay covering the period from her dismissal through December 20, 2025, when she accepted a private-sector position.
It remains unclear whether Comey intends to return to the Justice Department.
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Her attorneys described Monday’s decision as a ‘hard-earned victory’ for Comey and other civil servants. In a statement, they said the ruling ‘reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances.’
The ruling brings a temporary close to months of conflict between the Trump administration and Comey’s daughter. She argued that her dismissal was the ‘direct result’ of Trump’s longstanding hostility toward her father, former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017 before the conclusion of his 10-year tenure.
In her complaint, Comey’s lawyers argued that there was ‘no plausible’ explanation unrelated to that conflict for her termination.
Furman appeared to agree, noting that Comey had been ‘assigned some of the country’s highest profile cases’ during nearly 10 years at the Justice Department and had ‘consistently received the highest accolades from supervisors and peers alike.’
In a memo to colleagues last year, Comey said the Justice Department had ‘summarily fired via memo’ her from the job.
She said the notice offered no reason for the decision and did not make clear who had authorized her termination.
Trump administration officials later said Bondi, the former attorney general, had ‘directed’ Comey’s removal from the US attorney’s office, while Todd Blanche, who began serving as acting attorney general in April, had ‘ratified’ it.
When she filed the lawsuit, Comey pointed to more than 250 social-media posts that Trump had made or re-posted about her father. She said the posts ‘repeatedly’ called him the ‘worst’ FBI director in history.
Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the Justice Department has filed two separate criminal cases against James Comey. The first accuses him of making false statements to Congress; the second alleges that he threatened Trump through an Instagram image of seashells arranged to form the numbers ’86 47.’
The first case was ordered dismissed by a federal judge last year, and Comey has pleaded not guilty in the second case – describing both efforts as the result of ‘vindictive’ and selective prosecutions.
This is a developing news story and will be updated.