In September, Maurene Comey, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor and a daughter of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, sued the Trump administration, accusing it of firing her without cause and asking to be reinstated.
Two months later, the Justice Department, hobbled by scores of resignations and firings and strained by a crisis in morale, has not responded to the lawsuit.
The department, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, has struggled to determine which of its offices and lawyers will handle Ms. Comey’s lawsuit, leading to the highly unusual lapse. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal Justice Department affairs.
The Manhattan prosecutor’s office where Ms. Comey was considered one of the top trial lawyers until her abrupt firing in July has indicated that it will not work on the case, the people said. Nor will the Brooklyn prosecutor’s office, they said. The Federal Programs Branch of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, which often handles high-profile litigation such as Ms. Comey’s lawsuit, will not handle the case, either.
A spokesman for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. Spokesmen for the U.S. attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn declined to comment.
The episode highlights how the Trump administration has struggled with the repercussions of its treatment of federal employees. The firing of Ms. Comey, a prosecutor who worked on cases against Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, was highly unusual, blindsiding even the leadership of her Manhattan office.
It is part of a pattern that has developed since President Trump has taken closer control of the Justice Department than any president in the past half-century. Mr. Trump has turned the department against his adversaries while simultaneously using his pardon power to reward his allies.
The lack of response from the Justice Department caused the Manhattan judge presiding over the case to issue an order on Nov. 3 postponing a hearing and laying out more precise steps to ensure a Justice Department response. The judge, Jesse M. Furman, directed that his order be “promptly” shared with whichever Justice Department office would ultimately handle the matter.
As Judge Furman, noted, the defendants — including the U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi — have until Nov. 21 to respond.
Mr. Trump has long considered Ms. Comey’s father one of his foremost adversaries and has pushed a prosecution of Mr. Comey that is playing out in Virginia. On Thursday, Mr. Comey’s lawyers will present arguments challenging the appointment of Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney who secured charges against both of them.
In her lawsuit, Ms. Comey argued that the Trump administration was retaliating because of the president’s enmity toward her father, because of a perception of her politics or both. “No other plausible explanation exists for her termination,” her lawyers wrote.
The lawsuit noted that an independent agency known as the Merit Systems Protection Board would typically deal with complaints from a former federal employee. But, Ms. Comey said, the board had been unable to legally function after Mr. Trump fired a member in February, year before her tenure was up.
The Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office recused itself from her case because of Ms. Comey’s deep connections there. Aside from Ms. Comey’s decade in the office, her husband was also a lawyer in the office’s civil division — the division of the office that would handle a lawsuit like Ms. Comey’s — until May.
In addition, Ellen Blain, one of Ms. Comey’s lawyers, was formerly an acting deputy chief of the civil division. Ms. Blain left the Manhattan office in 2024.
Officials in the Brooklyn office also decided they that they should keep the case at arm’s length. Two of the people with knowledge of the matter said that the Brooklyn and Manhattan offices had close connections, including personal ties among some of the lawyers and the fact that their investigations can be intertwined. Both offices work with the same F.B.I. squads, and as a high-ranking prosecutor in Manhattan, Ms. Comey would have, at times, coordinated with the Brooklyn office’s prosecutors.
It was unclear why the Federal Programs Branch is not handling the lawsuit. Ms. Comey is not seeking money other than back pay and reimbursement for her legal fees. But she asked the court to find that Mr. Trump had acted unconstitutionally, and to prevent the administration from any further retaliation.
Former prosecutors have said that under the Trump administration, entire U.S. attorney’s offices often seek to avoid cases altogether, in part because it is now more difficult for individual prosecutors within those offices to decline to handle certain matters. Traditionally, prosecutors could ask off a case with few repercussions, citing its subject matter, their personal conflicts or ethical concerns.
But early in the Trump administration, Ms. Bondi issued a memo requiring attorneys to do whatever was asked of them by supervisors, or risk discipline and firing. Thus, the easiest way to shield individual lawyers from the professional consequences of handling questionable cases is for an entire office to avoid handling a sensitive or high-profile matter.
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in the New York region for The Times. He is focused on political influence and its effect on the rule of law in the area’s federal and state courts.
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