Two weeks after Maurene Comey secured a guilty verdict against Sean “Diddy” Combs, the Manhattan federal prosecutor received a three-paragraph letter from top justice department authorities.
“Your employment with the Department of Justice is hereby terminated, and you are removed from federal service effective immediately,” the 16 July missive from Francey Hakes, director of the DoJ’s executive office for United States attorneys, said.
Firing prompts political motivation questions
The shocking firing of Comey – whose extensive list of successes included prosecutions against Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Robert Hadden – has prompted questions about whether it was politically motivated, given that her father is former FBI director James Comey, whom Donald Trump publicly considers an enemy.
Now justice department officials’ recent defense of Maurene Comey’s firing – both in an 18 September court proceeding and legal filings – has lifted the veil on the apparent politicization of Trump’s DoJ and as well as his seeming desire to dramatically expand presidential power.
Justice department officials have insisted that under article II of the US constitution, which establishes presidential power, Trump and his attorney general can fire line prosecutors: employees who are not political appointees. DoJ attorneys have also invoked Comey’s familial “nexus” in court proceedings and the DOJ has said in court that former Trump Attorney Pam Bondi directed Comey’s firing.
Critics say DoJ warped under Trump
But critics and legal observers say that the testimony has instead shown how the justice department has become warped under Trump and bent to his will to pursue his personal vendettas against his perceived foes – and apparently their close family members.
“It’s no secret that the Department of Justice is highly politicized,” said Neama Rahmani, founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor. “A lot of career prosecutors have left voluntarily. Others have been forced out.”
“They’ve taken a very broad view of presidential power in many different areas of the law,” he said in reference to the DoJ’s article II argument.
Comey’s lawsuit and legal arguments
Comey sued the DoJ on 15 September 2025 over her firing, with attorneys Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron and Deepa Vanamali arguing that she was fired “solely or substantially because her father is former FBI director James B Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both”, in violation of her first amendment rights.
Comey’s attorneys maintain article II does not give the president or his attorney general power to fire legally protected civil servants without cause.
“It is far more plausible that she was fired for reasons that violate the first amendment than anything else. What else could it be? What would they have us believe, that her name was pulled out of a hat? It doesn’t pass the laugh test,” Gueron told Manhattan federal judge Jesse Furman during legal arguments on 18 September. “By admitting there was no cause to fire her, they raise the immediate question … why was she fired, and is there some reason other than a first amendment violation for her firing?”
Gueron referenced a line in an August DoJ filing that stated Comey “is thus wrong to assert that no ‘nexus’ exists between her familial relationship and ability to carry about her duties”.
“What does that mean? What is the nexus between her family and her job? It is not her ability to do the job. They have conceded she was fired without cause. It is not some kind of performance-based failure. So what is the nexus that they are referring to?” Gueron argued. “It can only be that they believe, because she is a member of a family that is politically disfavored by this administration, she is presumed incapable of doing her work, of serving her country, and presumed to hold disfavored political opinions.
“She’s basically deemed a political enemy, a thought criminal.”
Court proceedings reveal DoJ stance
During the proceeding, Furman asked the DoJ lawyer Tyler Becker: “When you referenced the nexus between Ms Comey’s familial relationship or family, or name, or whatever the case may be, and performance here, what did you mean by that?”
“The idea that the government could never consider the speech, or otherwise, of a family member in determining whether there is an appropriate nexus, just doesn’t make any sense in the ability to carry out their duties,” Becker responded.
He continued at one stage to say: “Given there may be some trust issues or something like that from the government, in terms of giving you that power due to certain familial relations.”
Furman asked: “In your view, is there a nexus between her family relationship, her last name, and her ability to carry out her duties?”
“We have not asserted any sort of nexus that exists,” Becker said. “We have just asserted that the attorney general can remove Ms Comey without cause. So we have not asserted that that is the reason for her termination whatsoever.”
Blain, who represents Comey, pressed on this moments later, saying that DoJ lawyers “couldn’t find an answer” and “struggled” when asked about this nexus.
“The government actually said that there may be trust issues due to familial relations,” Blain said. If that’s the nexus between her firing, then that “clearly violates” the constitution.
As for the government’s assertion that assistant US attorneys can be terminated without cause, Becker said criminal prosecution falls under the president’s executive powers – and that the ability to fire without cause was in keeping with good government.
“All the executive power is vested in a democratically elected president, and the accountability for serious prosecutorial decisions must not go to people who – or to bureaucrats in the government – who are not accountable to the people,” he said.
Chain of command and implications
The claim that accountability necessitated unchecked firing power over workaday prosecutors appears to contrast with longstanding agency hierarchy.
Speaking in general and not about Comey’s case, attorney Jackie Kelly, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor who now works at Boies Schiller Flexner, said there is a “chain of command” in US attorneys’ offices.
A line prosecutor has “numerous supervisors, both direct and skip level, within the office. They are directly supervised by their unit or section chief.”
“Those unit or section chiefs are, in turn, supervised by the chief of their division,” Kelly explained. “Those criminal and civil division heads are underneath the first assistant or the deputy US attorney, who reports to the US attorney.”
Assistant US attorneys, generally speaking, do not act “unilaterally”.
“There are numerous kinds of inflection points, or decision points, where supervisors are involved during the life of a case,” said Kelly, who worked with Comey at the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office.
Assistant US attorneys can be fired for cause – they’re not insulated in the event of bad performance. But that bad performance has to be spelled out.
“Anytime you have power, there’s the risk of the abuse of that power, so I think it’s really important that [assistant attorneys general] and other federal employees can be removed for cause,” Kelly said. “That’s kind of far afield from the idea that the executive can, on a whim, remove someone from their job without any regard for those protections.
“It’s impossible to seek justice and to do the job the right way if you’re looking over your shoulder in fear that you might get fired, or if you’re trying to seek favor with the executive.”
For Carl Tobias, the Williams chair at the University of Richmond School of Law, Furman’s questions suggest that he is not swayed by the DoJ’s arguments. As for what the case says about the DoJ under Trump, Tobias returned to what many believe is the main issue: Why was Maurene Comey actually fired?
“Even the government lawyers seem to admit that she was a model employee, and she had won a number of high-profile cases,” Tobias said. “That then leads to the question of whether it’s because of her father and those kinds of issues.”
