An Obama-appointed federal judge ordered the Trump Justice Department to reinstate Maurene Comey with back pay after finding her 2025 firing as a Manhattan prosecutor violated civil-service limits, a ruling the administration is expected to fight on appeal.
U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman on Monday directed the Trump administration to put Maurene Comey back in her post at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and to restore her pay. The New York Post reported that Furman issued a scathing 55-page order concluding her dismissal last year was illegal.
Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was ousted in July 2025. Furman held that she was an “inferior” officer covered by legal protections Congress approved, and that the government blew past those limits when it removed her.
Her lawyers cast the firing as political payback tied to her father’s long-running clash with President Trump. The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The administration is widely expected to appeal.
Furman did not dispute that the attorney general holds removal authority over an assistant U.S. attorney. He said Congress also fenced that power in, and that even the defendants conceded those fences were crossed in this case.
In the order, Furman wrote:
“Congress granted the Attorney General power to remove Comey,”
and continued that Congress “imposed limits on that power, limits that, even Defendants concede, were violated in Comey’s case.”
Just The News reported that Furman found the removal “indisputably violated the CSRA”, the Civil Service Reform Act, the main federal statute that governs how career civil servants can be disciplined or fired. The law generally requires cause and process before certain protected employees lose their jobs.
Fox News noted that Furman is an Obama appointee and that the Justice Department had argued broader constitutional removal power under Article II. The department conceded the firing was not performance-based, then claimed the president’s executive authority overrode the usual civil-service rules. Furman rejected that sweep.
Fox News reported the judge’s sharp line on that claim:
“Defendants’ argument that [Constitution] Article II bars Congress from regulating the removal of AUSAs flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.”
Furman also warned that letting the dismissal stand “would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.” He ordered Comey retroactively reinstated with back pay through Dec. 20, 2025.
Maurene Comey’s attorneys accused the White House of firing her out of retribution for her father’s actions in office and since. They said right-wing influencer Laura Loomer publicly claimed credit for the move. In material Furman recounted, Maurene Comey said she got “no other explanation” for the firing beyond being told it “came from Washington.”
After the order, her legal team framed the win as bigger than one prosecutor’s paycheck.
“This hard-earned victory belongs to Ms. Comey, to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law.”
They added that the decision “reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law.” That is their argument. The Justice Department’s position was that Article II gives the elected president real control over subordinate officers in his own branch, a claim this district judge refused to accept in the form the government pressed it.
Before her removal, Maurene Comey held prominent roles in major Southern District prosecutions, including cases tied to Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and hip-hop figure Sean “Diddy” Combs. None of that résumé, under Furman’s reading, erased the civil-service procedures the court said applied to her as an inferior officer.
Her father’s legal battles form the political backdrop the lawyers keep invoking. President Trump fired James Comey in May 2017 amid the FBI’s probe of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. James Comey was later indicted in April over an Instagram post showing the numbers “86 47” arranged in seashells on a North Carolina beach, a case a federal judge has already pushed into 2027.
He is awaiting trial in North Carolina on federal charges of threatening to kill the president, with arraignment scheduled for January 2027. A separate earlier prosecution for alleged false statements to Congress was thrown out in November 2025. Comey contends the current case is selective and vindictive. Those claims will be tested in court, not in a personnel memo from Main Justice.
Related Comey-era legal fights continue on other tracks, including a grand jury push involving ex-adviser Daniel Richman and fresh accountability cases against former bureau officials. Separately, a declassified FBI memo on the post-firing Russia probe remains part of the public record conservatives cite when measuring the bureau’s conduct in that period.
Furman’s order is not the last word the administration is likely to seek. The Supreme Court in June expanded the president’s ability to remove so-called “principal” federal officials. DOJ lawyers can be expected to argue that assistant U.S. attorneys sit close enough to core executive power that heavy civil-service armor on their removal raises constitutional problems, the same theory Furman brushed aside at the district level.
That sets up a familiar collision: statutory job protections written by Congress versus the president’s duty to supervise the prosecutors who enforce federal law in his name. Career status is not a blank check. Neither is a famous last name. The Southern District of New York is not a private guild.
Trump had repeatedly and publicly pressed then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring charges against James Comey. Maurene Comey’s firing landed in that same season of hard personnel moves. Her lawyers call it revenge. The administration called it authority. Furman called it a violation of the Civil Service Reform Act and ordered her badge and back pay restored pending the next round.
James Comey’s own North Carolina seashell-threat case is still grinding forward on a 2027 calendar. The daughter’s civil case and the father’s criminal case are legally separate. Politically, they travel together every time a Comey walks into a federal courthouse.
For now, a single district judge has told the Justice Department to undo a July 2025 removal, cut a back-pay check, and absorb a 55-page lecture on equilibrium and inferior officers. Higher courts get the next say on whether Congress can lock the president out of ordinary control over the lawyers who prosecute in the United States’ name.
Presidents are elected to run the executive branch, including the Justice Department. A district-court win for the Comey family does not settle who answers to whom in that chain of command.
