Comey claims the Trump administration fired her for political reasons, including her family ties to former FBI Director James Comey.
Published December 3, 2025
The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss a lawsuit it filed challenging the firing of former federal prosecutor Maureen Comey.
The Justice Department argued in court papers filed Monday that Comey failed to properly follow the administrative complaint process before filing suit.
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The motion to dismiss the case was filed ahead of Thursday’s hearing in the case in federal court in Manhattan.
In September, Comey sued the department, the Office of the President, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, the Office of Personnel Management, and the United States.
The suit says her firing in July was based on political reasons, including that her father is James Comey, a former FBI director and a prominent critic of President Donald Trump.
President Trump fired James Comey in 2017 amid disagreements over the investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Contents of dismissal application form
In a joint letter to Judge Jesse M. Furman, the Department of Justice petitioned to dismiss Maureen Comey’s case.
Both Maureen Comey’s attorney and the head of the civil division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albany contributed to the letter.
The Justice Department argued that Maureen Comey’s complaint should be thrown out because it did not fully follow administrative procedures that require the Merit System Protection Board to first consider her claim.
It also rejected her lawsuit’s argument that the notice of appeal she filed with the board was futile.
The Justice Department argued that the committee was “the appropriate forum to determine whether her firing was a prohibited personnel action, as Mr. Comey claims, or an arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
Mr. Comey’s lawyers said in a filing that the committee “lacks the expertise to adjudicate this new dispute” and that it is not the appropriate forum because “this case raises fundamental constitutional questions regarding the separation of powers.”
They also argued that it is “no longer true” that the board functions independently of the president.
Last month, U.S. Attorney John Sarcone in Albany took over the case after New York prosecutors dismissed it. In New York, Maureen Comey had secured guilty verdicts in several high-profile cases, including the sex trafficking conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell and the bribery convictions of former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife.
Two weeks before Maureen Comey was fired, a jury found music mogul Sean Combs guilty of prostitution-related charges, but acquitted him of more serious sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges. She led the prosecution team.
Combs, 56, is scheduled to be released from prison in June 2028.
Maxwell, 63, was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 after a jury found she aided financier Jeffrey Epstein in sexually abusing girls and women. Epstein was found dead in his federal prison cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.
Maxwell was transferred from a Florida prison last summer and is serving a 20-year sentence at a prison camp in Texas.
Robert Menendez, 71, is incarcerated in Pennsylvania. He is scheduled to be released in September 2034.
