Maurene Comey Says Trump Fired Her for ‘Her DNA’ and for Being a ‘Thought Criminal’

The fired federal prosecutor Maurene Comey is alleging that she was removed from her post at the Southern District of New York because the Trump administration saw her as a “thought criminal.”That claim surfaced on Friday in oral arguments between Ms. Comey and the Department of Justice before Judge Jesse Furman, an appointee of President Obama. Ms. Comey alleges that “no legitimate explanation” justifies her firing in July 2025. The Justice Department contends that the president possesses the untrammelled power to terminate her under Article II of the Constitution.Ms. Comey’s firing came two months after an adviser to President Trump, Laura Loomer, called for the “liberal daughter” of the former FBI director, James Comey, and her “Democrat husband” to be “FIRED from the DOJ immediately.” Ms. Loomer added in another post that “Don’t expect anything good to happen at the DOJ if Blondi” — a reference to Attorney General Pam Bondi — “can’t even bring herself to fire Comey’s rat daughter.” Mr. Comey is currently being prosecuted by the Justice Department for an Instagram post that the government alleges made a “true threat” on Mr. Trump’s life by depicting seashells on a beach in an “86 47” formation. Last week the department made the case in oral arguments to the Fourth United States Appeals Circuit that Judge McGowan Cameron Currie erred when she dismissed separate charges against Mr. Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in 2020. Judge Currie ruled that the prosecutor leading that case, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed by Ms Bondi. Ms. Comey’s attorney, Ellen Blain, told Judge Furman in this case that her client “clearly worked her heart and soul in this district for a decade. To have been summarily fired without warning, without notice, because of who her father is, upends bedrock principles of our democracy.” The Justice Department concedes that Ms. Comey, who led the cases against Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Sean “Diddy” Combs, was an “outstanding” prosecutor. She is now a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler.Ms. Comey’s suit insists that her firing violated the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which prohibits firing civil servants for political reasons. It mandates that those fired receive at least the rudiments of due process — meaning that the reasons given for their removal cannot be “arbitrary and capricious.” She argues that “she was fired for reasons that violated the First Amendment” and was “basically deemed a political enemy, a thought criminal.”The Justice Department countered by telling Judge Furman, “All of the executive power is vested in a democratically elected president, and accountability for serious prosecutor decisions must not go to bureaucrats in the government who are not accountable to the people.” That means that “employees or inferior officers who exercise conclusive and preclusive executive power must be removable at will.”In June the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter by a six to three votethat the president has the constitutional authority to fire commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission at will. That overturned a nearly century old precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. Slaughter, though, did not touch the question of whether the president can fire “inferior” officers such as assistant United States attorneys.Ms. Comey retorted that “no court has found that criminal AUSAs or any AUSAs exercise the president’s preclusive and conclusive authority” — meaning that they are not directly fireable by the president. Judge Furman in turn pushed the government to answer whether the president’s power to fire under Article II is so expansive that it would allow the executive branch to “exercise that authority on the basis of race and the court couldn’t say otherwise?”To that the Justice Department responded that “Article II would not permit inquiry into that matter.” Mr. Comey’s lawyers allege that such a position is the product of “legal contortions” offered by the department in order to “fire a civil servant because of her DNA.” Judge Furman did not issue an immediate ruling following oral arguments, but he promised that one would be handed down in short order.

Maurene Comey Says Trump Fired Her for ‘Her DNA’ and for Being a ‘Thought Criminal’

Maurene Comey Says Trump Fired Her for ‘Her DNA’ and for Being a ‘Thought Criminal’

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