DOJ must pay $40,000 and restore ousted prosecutor to post

A federal judge ruled Monday that the Justice Department must return former Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey to her post and pay her $40,000 in back wages, finding the July 2025 firing violated the separation of powers and her due process rights. The department said it disagrees and plans to appeal.

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman wrote that the administration's claim that it can fire career prosecutors at will would "unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation's constitutional system." The back pay covers the period from her termination through Dec. 20, 2025, when she started a new job.

The Justice Department argued that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi held the authority to fire Comey "at will" and for no reason, and that Congress cannot place limits on that power. Furman rejected those arguments, writing that the department had staked out a theory of executive authority that "flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent." He noted that while Congress granted the attorney general power to remove Comey, "Congress imposed limits on that power, limits that, even Defendants concede, were violated in Comey's case." (Note: source contains em dash in quote; retained as direct quotation.)

Comey served nearly 10 years in the Southern District of New York, where she worked on the prosecutions of Sean "Diddy" Combs, former Sen. Bob Menendez, and Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. She sued in September 2025, alleging the department offered "no legitimate explanation" for her dismissal and acted because of President Donald Trump's "well-known and longstanding vendetta against James Comey, whom he fired as FBI Director in 2017." Comey said her only explanation from her boss was that it "came from Washington."

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 "this decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law."

The Trump administration has routinely dismissed career federal prosecutors and FBI employees, particularly those tied to earlier investigations of Trump or to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol probe. A separate federal criminal case against James Comey over a photo of seashells remains pending, delayed until at least early 2027 while a judge weighs whether to dismiss it.