New York federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, who worked on the prosecutions against Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Sean “Diddy” Combs, was fired July 16, according to media reports citing sources familiar with the matter.
The reason for the firing, which was reported by ABC News and Politico, wasn’t immediately clear. Comey, a graduate of Harvard Law School and long-time prosecutor in New York’s Manhattan federal office, is also the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump in 2017 and still frequently draws his ire.
Maurene Comey was given a memo on her firing that noted the president’s broad constitutional powers to terminate employees, according to Reuters, which cited two sources familiar with the matter.
Spokespeople at the Justice Department’s D.C. headquarters didn’t immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment on the firing. Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the New York U.S. attorney’s office, declined to comment.
This week, Trump complained publicly about James Comey as he faced continued questions about why members of his team weren’t delivering on their promises of revelations and greater transparency when it came to the government’s records on Epstein, a disgraced financier and sex offender. After the Justice Department and FBI said in a terse memo released last week that they were essentially closing the book on the case, Trump said July 15 that the government’s Epstein files were “made up” by the former FBI head as well as Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
During the recent Sean “Diddy” Combs trial in Manhattan, Judge Arun Subramanian often turned to Maurene Comey – one of several trial prosecutors in the case – to seek her knowledge about past judicial rulings and the rules governing trial procedure. Comey’s team received a mixed verdict in that sex-trafficking and prostitution case, with Combs winning an acquittal on the most serious charges.
Comey and her colleagues successfully prosecuted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in a sex-trafficking case in 2021, winning a conviction on five out of six counts.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump fires ex-FBI chief’s daughter, who prosecuted Epstein and Diddy
