NEW YORK (AP) — Maurene Comey can go ahead with her lawsuit claiming she was wrongfully fired from her job as a federal prosecutor because President Donald Trump dislikes her father, former FBI Director James Comey, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
Judge Jesse M. Furman rejected an argument by the Justice Department that Comey’s complaint about her dismissal last year should be moved out of court and handled instead by an administrative panel.
Furman in Manhattan noted in a written ruling that the sole reason provided for Maurene Comey's firing last year was Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which vests “executive power” in the president.
He said that reason takes her case outside the process that channels many, if not most, categories of disputes between federal employers and employees to avenues of administrative and judicial review outside of district courts.
Maurene Comey’s lawyers said in a statement that they were “thrilled” with Furman’s ruling because their client’s “lawless, unconstitutional termination” belongs in a federal court where questions about the constitutional separation of powers are commonly litigated.
“No president can ignore the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and federal law to fire a career federal employee based solely on her last name,” attorneys Ellen Blain and Nicole Gueron said.
The Justice Department didn’t immediately comment.
Furman’s ruling came the same day that Maurene Comey's father was indicted again, this time in an investigation over a social media photo of seashells arranged on a beach that officials said constituted a threat against Trump. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The new prosecution against James Comey came months after a separate and unrelated indictment was dismissed. Trump fired him in 2017.
Maurene Comey sued after her summer firing — soon after she led the prosecution of Sean “Diddy” Combs and won a conviction on prostitution-related charges — contending that she was improperly removed solely or substantially because of who her father is or because of her perceived political affiliation or beliefs, Furman said.
Furman wrote that Comey “was, by all accounts, an exemplary Assistant United States Attorney” who in nearly a decade as a prosecutor “was assigned some of the country’s highest profile cases, and she consistently received the highest accolades from supervisors and peers alike.”
During oral arguments in December, Furman refused to let Comey immediately gather evidence to learn who ordered her firing and how it transpired, saying the government had made serious arguments that her firing must first be considered by the federal Merit Systems Protection Board.
Furman set a May 28 hearing for an initial pretrial conference in the civil case.
