By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Related Press
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Justice Division is looking for dismissal of a lawsuit that fired former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey introduced towards it, saying she didn’t correctly observe administrative criticism procedures earlier than suing.
The argument was in courtroom papers filed Monday previous to a Thursday listening to in Manhattan federal courtroom.
In September, Comey sued the division, the Govt Workplace of the President, U.S. Legal professional Common Pamela Bondi, the Workplace of Personnel Administration and america.
The lawsuit stated her July firing was primarily based on political causes, together with that her father is former FBI Director James Comey. President Donald Trump fired James Comey in 2017.
The Justice Division indicated its protection to the lawsuit in a joint letter submitted to Choose Jesse M. Furman by Maurene Comey’s attorneys and the chief of the civil division of the federal prosecutor’s workplace in Albany.
It stated her lawsuit was not correctly earlier than the courtroom as a result of she didn’t absolutely adjust to administrative procedures requiring the Advantage Methods Safety Board to first take into account her declare. It rejected her lawsuit’s declare that the discover of attraction she filed with the board was futile.
The board, the Justice Division maintained, was “the appropriate forum to determine whether, as Ms. Comey claims, her removal was a prohibited personnel action or an arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
Maurene Comey’s attorneys stated within the submitting that the board “lacks expertise to adjudicate this novel dispute” and was not an applicable discussion board as a result of “this case raises foundational constitutional questions with respect to the separation of powers.” Additionally they argued that it was “no longer true” that the board capabilities independently of the president.
Final month, U.S. Legal professional John Sarcone in Albany took the case after the recusal of prosecutors in New York, the place Maurene Comey had secured responsible verdicts in a number of high-profile instances, together with the intercourse trafficking conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell and the bribery convictions of former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez and his spouse.
Two weeks earlier than Maurene Comey was fired, a jury convicted music maven Sean Combs of prostitution-related prices, although it acquitted him of extra critical intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy prices. She led the prosecution crew. Combs, 56, is scheduled for launch from jail in June 2028.
Maxwell, 63, was convicted in December 2021 on intercourse trafficking prices after a jury discovered she aided the intercourse abuse of women and girls by financier Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was discovered useless in his federal jail cell in August 2019 as he awaited a intercourse trafficking cost. His dying was dominated a suicide. Maxwell is serving a 20-year jail sentence at a jail camp in Texas, the place she was transferred final summer time from a jail in Florida.
Robert Menendez, 71, is imprisoned in Pennsylvania. He’s scheduled for launch in September 2034.
