Judge: Trump DOJ illegally fired ex-FBI director's daughter, Maurene
Comey, as a federal prosecutor
[October 27, 2026]
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, ERIC TUCKER, ALANNA DURKIN and LARRY
NEUMEISTER
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.”
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In this photo taken with a smartphone former Assistant U.S. Attorney
Maurene Comey and her husband Lucas Issacharoff leave a hearing in
her lawsuit over her firing by the Justice Department at a Manhattan
federal courthouse on Dec. 4, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Michael
R. Sisak)
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.
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Tucker and Durkin reported from Washington.
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