President Donald Trump’s Justice Department lost its legal fight over firing the daughter of his longtime foe, former FBI Director James Comey, as a judge ordered her reinstated with back pay.
U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ruled Monday that the department unlawfully fired Maurene Comey, a longtime federal prosecutor in Manhattan, in July 2025, according to his 55-page opinion. She worked on the prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs, the opinion notes.
Furman retroactively ordered her reinstated, with back pay through Dec. 20, 2025, when she accepted a different job. She is now a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler.
The order makes Maurene Comey whole for the months after her firing, the ruling says. It restores her retirement contributions, credits her with more than 10 years of service, and changes her file to show she resigned rather than was fired. Furman will decide the backpay amount later.
In court, the Trump administration argued that Article II of the Constitution, which sets out the president’s powers, let the attorney general fire prosecutors like Maurene Comey at will. Furman wrote that the argument “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.”
“Perhaps recognizing the breathtaking implications of their argument,” government lawyers tried to limit it to criminal prosecutors like Maurene Comey, the judge wrote. He noted the same reasoning could strip job protections from drug agents, border officers, immigration officers and IRS agents.
“[T]o reward that effort would … risk a return to the spoils system that Congress has sought to end since the nineteenth century,” Furman wrote.
The department also argued in a May court filing that firings like hers automatically “constitute removals for ‘efficiency of the service,’” a civil service standard. Yet the same filing admitted her removal “was not ‘for cause’ and was not based on her performance.” Furman wrote that the efficiency argument “borders on frivolous.”
That filing also said then-Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the firing and that Todd Blanche, then serving as acting attorney general, later ratified it. Furman wrote that the law “did not give Bondi authority to act in the first instance; nor did it give Blanche authority to ratify her act after the fact.”
On the day she was fired, ABC News reported that Trump “privately vented about having a Comey work in his administration,” citing sources.
In a court filing in August, the department argued that Maurene Comey was wrong to deny any “nexus” between her family ties and her ability to do her job, the Guardian reported. At a Sept. 18 hearing, Justice Department lawyer Tyler Becker cited possible “trust issues” due to “certain familial relations.” But when Furman asked whether such a nexus existed, Becker said the department had “not asserted any sort of nexus that exists,” according to the Guardian.
In April, the Justice Department indicted James Comey a second time, over a photo of seashells spelling “86 47” that Trump called “a mob term for kill him.” Blanche defended the case on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
On Oct. 21, Blanche told the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast there was a “misperception that there’s this separation and independence between the Department of Justice and the White House,” adding, “I work for President Trump.”
Furman has not ruled on Maurene Comey’s claim that she was fired over her ties to her father, in violation of her free speech rights, the ruling says. He ordered more written arguments on that claim by Nov. 9 and signaled he may dismiss it because her other wins likely give her the same relief.
In a farewell letter after her firing, Maurene Comey warned colleagues that “fear is the tool of a tyrant.”
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