Maurene Comey was an award-winning prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New York City who was recognized for excellence in her work on the Jeffrey Epstein prosecution. Shortly after being recognized for that work, she was abruptly fired, allegedly because influencers in President Donald Trump’s inner circle wanted to punish her father, James Comey. When Maurene Comey sued the Department of Justice, the Trump administration claimed that they could fire Assistant U.S. Attorneys (AUSAs) for any reason, despite the legal protections AUSAs enjoy under federal law. In July 2026, the Constitutional Accountability Center filed an amicus brief explaining why the Trump administration is wrong.

First, the Constitution gives Congress great flexibility in determining how best to shape the federal government, as well as a unique authority over “inferior officers,” a term of art for officers who work under some supervision, and employees. It was no accident that the Framers empowered Congress in this way. In England, the King’s ability to create offices and titles of nobility and fill them with hand-selected appointees had allowed monarchs to create a massively corrupt patronage system. Therefore, in the new United States, the Founders created a system that gave the President some flexibility over superior officers, but allowed Congress to regulate the removal of inferior officers and employees.

Second, Congress has regulated the appointment and removal of inferior officers and employees since the Founding. From the beginning, it specified which officers would serve fixed terms and which would be removable at will. After the Civil War, Congress took aim at increased corruption in federal employment by passing federal laws regulating the appointment of civil servants. As the civil service system expanded, Congress protected these civil servants from arbitrary removal. In 1897, President McKinley issued an executive order preventing removals of civil servicemembers without “just cause,” “full notice,” and “opportunity to make defense,” and in 1912, Congress wrote these protections into law. These developments were buttressed by the passage of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), which prohibited agencies from engaging in “arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion for partisan political purposes” with regards to their employees. In the 1990 Civil Service Due Process Amendments, Congress clarified that employees in the excepted service, including AUSAs, would receive the tenure protections described in the CSRA.

These removal protections are constitutional. The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized Congress’s power to govern the removal of inferior officers and employees. And while the Supreme Court recently overruled the precedent holding that Congress can create “expert agencies led by a group of principal officers removable by the President only for good cause,” it relied on historical evidence that specifically addresses the removal of high-level officers and explicitly declined to “determine the fate of officials not before [it].” Its decision provides no basis for extending that removal power to inferior officers supervised by the Attorney General.