The Justice Department will seek to dismiss a lawsuit that former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey brought against it, arguing she didn’t properly follow administrative complaint procedures before suing.
The government laid out its argument in court papers filed Monday prior to a Thursday hearing in Manhattan federal court.
Comey, a former federal prosecutor in New York who handled criminal cases against Sean “Diddy” Combs, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, sued the Trump administration in September over her firing in July, saying her ouster was “unlawful and unconstitutional.” In their complaint, Comey’s attorneys argued that her termination was “politically motivated” and an overreach of presidential authority.
Comey is the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, who has publicly clashed with President Trump for years. In 2017, Mr. Trump terminated James Comey as FBI director, amid the department’s investigation into any ties between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.
James Comey was indicted by a grand jury in September on two counts related to testimony he provided to Congress in September 2020. He has pleaded not guilty. A federal judge last week ordered the criminal charges against him be dismissed on the grounds that Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney who secured the indictment, was unlawfully appointed to the role. Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters that the Justice Department will “be taking all available legal action, including an immediate appeal.”
The Justice Department indicated its planned defense to Maurene Comey’s lawsuit in a joint letter submitted Monday to Judge Jesse M. Furman by Maurene Comey’s lawyers and the chief of the civil division of the federal prosecutor’s office in Albany.
The government’s sections in the letter argued her lawsuit was not properly before the court because she did not fully comply with administrative procedures requiring the Merit Systems Protection Board to first consider her claim. It rejected her lawsuit’s claim that the notice of appeal she filed with the board in August was futile.
The board, the Justice Department maintained in the letter, was “the appropriate forum to determine whether, as Ms. Comey claims, her removal was a prohibited personnel action or an arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
Maurene Comey’s lawyers said in the filing that the board “lacks expertise to adjudicate this novel dispute” and was not an appropriate forum because “this case raises foundational constitutional questions with respect to the separation of powers.” They also argued that it was “no longer true” that the board functions independently of the president.
A lawyer for Maurene Comey referred CBS News to the letter on Tuesday.
Before her firing in July, Maurene Comey was an assistant U.S. attorney in the high-profile U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, where she had worked since 2015. Her lawyers wrote in their lawsuit that she was fired one day after she had “been asked to take the lead on a major public corruption case.” Just months before, she had received an “outstanding” review from supervisors, the complaint said.
Last month, U.S. Attorney John Sarcone in Albany took on the case and indicated his office will defend the Trump administration in the lawsuit. The move followed the recusal of prosecutors in Manhattan, where Maurene Comey had secured guilty verdicts in several high-profile cases, including the sex trafficking conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell and the bribery convictions of former Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife.
Two weeks before Maurene Comey was fired, a jury convicted Combs of prostitution-related charges, though it acquitted him of more serious sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges. She led the prosecution team. Combs, 56, is scheduled for release from prison in June 2028.
Maxwell, 63, was convicted in December 2021 on sex trafficking charges after a jury found she aided the sex abuse of girls and women by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was found dead in his federal jail cell in August 2019 as he awaited a sex trafficking charge. His death was ruled a suicide. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, where she was transferred last summer from a prison in Florida.
Robert Menendez, 71, is imprisoned in Pennsylvania. He is scheduled for release in September 2034.