Judge Orders Justice Department to Reinstate Former Prosecutor Maurene Comey

A federal judge ruled on Monday that former Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey was "unlawfully terminated" from the Justice Department and ordered that she be reinstated. Comey is the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey.

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman found that her abrupt dismissal in July 2025 violated the separation of powers under the Constitution, as well as her Fifth Amendment due process rights and her statutory rights. He wrote that the Trump administration's claim that it can fire career prosecutors at will would "unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation's constitutional system."

Furman awarded Comey back pay from the date of her termination through Dec. 20, 2025, when she started a new job.

A Justice Department spokesperson said the department "disagrees with this decision and will appeal in due course." Comey's attorneys, Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan, said in a joint statement that the ruling "reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law." They called it a "hard-earned victory" that belongs to Comey, to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law.

During her nearly 10 years in the Southern District of New York, Comey worked on a number of high-profile cases. They included the prosecutions of 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 sued in September 2025. She argued that the administration gave "no legitimate explanation" for the firing and acted only because of President Donald Trump's "well-known and longstanding vendetta against James Comey, whom he fired as FBI Director in 2017." She said the only thing her boss told her was that the decision "came from Washington." The Justice Department later stated in a court filing that she was removed at the direction of then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Furman concluded that Bondi did not follow the law and thereby deprived Comey of due process. "Congress granted the Attorney General power to remove Comey," he wrote, but "Congress imposed limits on that power, limits that, even Defendants concede, were violated in Comey's case." The government had argued that Bondi could fire Comey at will, for no reason at all, and that Congress cannot limit that authority. The judge rejected those arguments, calling the department's position a "sweeping and unprecedented theory of executive authority" that "flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent."

The administration has routinely fired career federal prosecutors and FBI employees, particularly people tied to earlier investigations of Trump or to the sweeping inquiry into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Furman appeared to account for those dismissals, writing that the defendants "invented a new and expansive theory of executive power" and have used it to remove other employees who long held protections from removal. He said his declaration should "serve a useful purpose in clarifying or settling the legal issues involved."

Separately, the administration continues to pursue a federal criminal case against James Comey over a photo of seashells that it contends amounted to a threat against Trump. That case has been delayed until at least early 2027 while a judge considers whether to dismiss it. His legal team argues the prosecution stems from a retribution campaign by Trump and that "dictionaries, context, precedent, and common sense" show the photo was not a true threat.