Justice Department plans appeal after judge finds Comey eligible for backpay

Furman says attorney general’s removal power has limits

The Justice Department said it disagreed with U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman’s ruling and plans to appeal the decision, which found Maurene Comey eligible for about five months of backpay and held her removal from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan unlawful. Furman’s analysis turned on the legal limits on the attorney general’s authority over federal prosecutors.

The ruling came on Monday in a 55-page decision from Furman, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. “The court concludes that Comey’s removal was unlawful,” he wrote. Furman also found that Comey was eligible for about five months of backpay.

Furman acknowledged that Congress had granted the attorney general power to remove prosecutors like Comey. He said that authority had limits and that those limits had been violated in her case: “To accept defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this nation’s constitutional system,” he wrote.

Comey’s legal team called the decision a hard-earned victory for her and other civil servants. “This decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: The president is not above the law,” the team said.

Comey sued the Trump administration in 2025 after she was abruptly dismissed. She alleged that the firing did not concern her performance and instead reflected either retaliation for her association with her father, former FBI director James Comey, or perceptions of her political viewpoint. The Justice Department argued in court documents that the firing was lawful.

The dispute followed a July 16, 2025 email from Justice Department officials in Washington telling Comey she had been fired pursuant to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which outlines the president’s powers. Her lawsuit also noted that right-wing influencer and Trump ally Laura Loomer had called for Comey’s “liberal daughter” to be “FIRED from the DOJ immediately.”

Comey said in court documents that she asked then-U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton why she had been dismissed after receiving the email. “All I can say is it came from Washington. I can’t tell you anything else,” she said Clayton told her.

Before her dismissal, Comey had worked at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan for about a decade. She was well regarded by her colleagues, according to The Wall Street Journal, and worked on high-profile criminal cases involving music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, Jeffrey Epstein and Epstein’s former associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Earlier this year, Comey joined the law firm Patterson Belknap.

Her father, James Comey, was removed as FBI director by Trump in 2017 and has since spoken publicly against the president. The Justice Department charged James Comey in 2025 with allegedly lying to Congress, but a federal judge later dismissed that case. Federal prosecutors then obtained another indictment earlier this year, alleging that James Comey threatened Trump by posting a picture of seashells arranged on a beach to spell out “86 47.” James Comey has denied wrongdoing, said the case was politically motivated and moved to dismiss the charges.