The justice department has fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey and a prosecutor in the federal cases against Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jeffrey Epstein, two people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
There was no specific reason given for her firing from the US attorney’s office in the southern district of New York, according to one of the people who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
The justice department and Comey did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Her termination comes shortly after she prosecuted Combs, who was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges. The rapper was convicted of lesser prostitution-related offenses.
Comey also prosecuted Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell on sex-trafficking charges.
Earlier this month, attorney general Pam Bondi attracted the ire of longtime, rightwing supporters of Donald Trump when she announced the justice department did not have a list of Epstein’s alleged clients. Laura Loomer, the 32-year-old conspiracy theorist whose influence over Trump has come under scrutiny, accused Bondi of “covering up child sex crimes”.
Calls for the department to release the “Epstein files” have grown louder in recent days, with House speaker Mike Johnson breaking with the president on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Trump lashed out at his supporters in a lengthy social media post, calling them gullible “weaklings” who’d fallen for a “radical left” hoax by Democrats to discredit him.
The justice department recently appeared to acknowledge the existence of an investigation into James Comey, though the basis for that inquiry is unclear. He was abruptly fired by Trump during his first administration in 2017.
James Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then president Barack Obama and serving before that as a senior justice department official in President George W Bush’s administration. But his relationship with Trump was strained from the start, and Comey resisted a request from Trump at a private dinner to pledge personal loyalty to the president – an overture that so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.
Soon after, Trump fired Comey amid an investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign. That inquiry, later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, would ultimately find that although Russia interfered with the 2016 election and the Trump team welcomed the help, there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal collaboration.
Trump’s fury at the older Comey continued long after firing him from the bureau, blaming him for a “hoax” and “witch-hunt” that cast a shadow over much of his first term.
Comey disclosed contemporaneous memos of his conversations with Trump to a friend so that their content could be revealed to the media, and the following year he published a book calling Trump “ego driven” and likening him to a mafia don.
Trump, for his part, has accused Comey and other officials of treason.
