New York — The US Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss the lawsuit that fired a former federal prosecutor Maureen Comey filed against her, saying she did not properly follow administrative complaint procedures before filing suit.
The argument was in court papers filed Monday ahead of a hearing Thursday in Manhattan federal court.
In September, Comey filed a lawsuit against the department, the Executive Office of the President, US Attorney Pamela Bondi, the Office of Personnel Management and the United States.
The suit said her firing last July was based on political reasons, including that her father is former FBI Director James Comey. President Donald Trump fired James Comey in 2017.
The Justice Department indicated its defense of the lawsuit in a joint letter filed by lawyers for Maureen Comey and the head of the civil division at the federal prosecutor’s office in Albany to Judge Jesse M. Furman.
She said her lawsuit was not properly filed in court because she did not fully comply with administrative procedures that require the Merit Systems Protection Board to first consider her claim. She rejected her lawsuit’s claim that her notice of appeal to the board was frivolous.
The Justice Department asserted that the board is “the appropriate forum to determine whether her removal was, as Ms. Comey claims, a prohibited personal action or an arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
Maureen Comey’s lawyers said in the lawsuit that the Board “lacks the expertise necessary to adjudicate this new dispute” and was 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 council acts independently of the president.
Last month, US Attorney John Sarcone in Albany took over the case after New York prosecutors stepped down, with Maureen Comey securing guilty verdicts in several high-profile cases, including the sex trafficking conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell and the bribery convictions of former US Senator Bob Menendez and his wife.
Two weeks before Maureen Comey’s firing, a jury convicted music guru Sean Combs on prostitution charges, though he was acquitted of more serious charges of sex trafficking, conspiracy and racketeering. She led the prosecution team. Combs, 56, is scheduled to be released from prison in June 2028.
Maxwell, 63, was convicted in December 2021 on sex trafficking charges after a jury found she aided in the sexual abuse of girls and women by financier Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was found dead in his federal prison cell in August 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges. His death was considered a suicide. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence in a concentration camp in Texas, where she was He was transferred last summer from a Florida prison.
Robert Menendez, 71, is in prison in Pennsylvania. He is scheduled for release in September 2034.