Judge rules Trump administration illegally fired federal prosecutor Maurene Comey

A Manhattan federal judge ruled on Monday that the Trump administration’s termination of Maurene Comey, an assistant U.S. attorney, was unlawful. Judge Jesse M. Furman said the firing breached the constitutional separation of powers, the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment due-process clause, and granted Comey retroactive reinstatement and back pay through Dec. 20 to compensate for the unlawful termination.

"To accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system," Furman wrote, rejecting the government’s claim that the president holds conclusive authority to remove federal prosecutors.

Comey, who served as a federal prosecutor for a decade and worked on high-profile cases including the prosecutions of Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, was dismissed in July 2025. She sued the Justice Department, alleging the termination violated the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment and the separation of powers because of her familial connection to former FBI director James Comey.

The Justice Department issued a brief stating it disagrees with the decision and will appeal.

"This decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law," said Comey’s attorneys in a statement.

The ruling has broader implications for the administration’s practice of removing career federal employees, which the judge said conflicts with nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.