One Big Club Update: Judge Rules DOJ Unlawfully Fired Epstein Prosecutor Maurene Comey, Orders Her Reinstated
Furman (the Judge) rejected the government’s central argument that the attorney general can fire a career prosecutor at will. He wrote that the administration was trying to “upend” long-settled case law allowing Congress to regulate the removal of inferior officers, called the Justice Department’s position a “sweeping and unprecedented theory of executive authority,” and warned that accepting it would “unsettle the very equilibrium” of the constitutional system.
He also refused to let a later sign-off cure the firing. The administration said in May that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi “directed” the removal and that her successor, Todd Blanche, “ratified” it. Furman held that the ratification did not save it.
The Justice Department says it will appeal, so the reinstatement may not stick. In court it leaned on a statute letting the attorney general remove assistant U.S. attorneys, and on the Supreme Court’s June decision allowing the president to fire members of certain independent agencies at will. Furman called those arguments “without merit,” per the Daily Beast.