'Perfect test case' against Trump DOJ will 'affect legal rights' of all federal employees

Jeffrey Toobin writes in the New York Times that while two pending Donald Trump administration cases against former FBI Director James Comey and Comey's daughter Maurene, are both "potential landmarks in the history of American justice," it's the case against Maurene that may be far more consequential.

A grand jury indicted James Comey in September on two counts related to his 2020 testimony about the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and communications with the media. He has pleaded not guilty.

Federal prosecutor Maurene Comey filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over her abrupt dismissal in July, alleging her firing was politically motivated due to her father, and violated her civil service protections and constitutional rights.

"The resolution of Ms. Comey’s challenge to her dismissal could affect the legal rights of nearly all federal employees," Toobin writes. "Her lawsuit is a nearly perfect test case, because she had an impeccable record as a prosecutor."

Maurene Comey "handled some of the department’s highest-profile cases, including the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, for sex trafficking, before his suicide and she later successfully prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell. Shortly before she was fired, she was part of the team that won only a partial conviction of Sean 'Diddy' Combs for various sex-related offenses," Toobin explains.

"Ms. Comey has maintained that there was never any allegation, much less proof, offered to her that her performance was deficient," he adds.

Toobin says that while she was given no reason for her termination by the Justice Department, Maurene Comey was fired because she was a target of right-wing MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, who called for her to be fired as a “national security risk” because of her “proximity to a criminal."

And while the president has the right to fire political appointees, Toobin writes, federal employees like Maurene Comey have been protected by the Civil Service rules.

“Ms. Comey has a very good case that she was fired in violation of the Civil Service act, which says you have to be fired for cause, and they have stated no cause for firing her,” says Richard Pierce Jr., a law professor at George Washington University, who is an authority on Civil Service law.

Maurene Comey's case, Toobin explains, "raises a further question about the extension of executive power: whether the president can also fire — for any reason or no reason — hundreds of thousands of other federal employees."

But this case has far more reach than just that, Toobin says.

"The greatest risk of putting the tenure of all federal employees at the whim of the president is not that he will fire them all; it’s that people like Ms. Comey will not seek out the work in the first place."