The Justice Department has fired Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor and the daughter of ex-FBI director James Comey, according to three sources, including one former Justice Department prosecutor.
She was given a memo informing her of the firing, two sources said. According to one source, the memo stated in part that she was being dismissed pursuant to Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which is the portion of the Constitution that lays out the president’s powers.
Maurene Comey served as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, where she was the lead prosecutor on the criminal case against Sean “Diddy” Combs — a case that ended in acquittal on the most serious charges but convictions for interstate prostitution.
She also helped lead the criminal prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell was convicted and sentenced to 20 years for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls for at least a decade between the 1990s and 2000s. She appealed her conviction to the Supreme Court.
In 2017, President Trump terminated James Comey as FBI director, amid the department’s investigation into any ties between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. James Comey is currently under a Justice Department investigation after he provoked an outcry from the Trump administration in May when he briefly posted a photo to Instagram that federal officials alleged was a call for violence against Mr. Trump.
Maurene Comey worked as a prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York since 2015, according to Comey’s LinkedIn page. Prior to that, she was a law clerk to Chief Judge Loretta A. Preska in New York and an associate at Debevoise & Plimpton.
She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2013 and received her bachelor’s from the College of William and Mary in 2010.
