HIGH-PROFILE PROSECUTOR FIRED BY TRUMP LASHES OUT

Fear is the tool of tyrants, says Maurene Comey, who worked on Epstein case.

- By William K Rashbaum

Maurene Comey, a career federal prosecutor who worked on the Jeffrey Epstein case and was abruptly fired by the Trump administration last week, implored her colleagues not to give into fear, calling it “the tool of a tyrant”.

“If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain,” she wrote in an email circulated to her colleagues within the federal prosecutor's office in Manhattan. “Do not let that happen.”

Ms Comey is the daughter of James Comey, the former FBI director and an adversary of President Donald Trump.

She also prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell, who conspired with Epstein, and was the lead prosecutor in the recent trial of Sean Combs, a hip-hop entrepreneur who was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced earlier this month.

Ms Comey was told of her firing on Wednesday in a letter from a Justice Department official in Washington who cited Article II of the constitution, which broadly describes the powers of the president. She said the letter did not give a reason for her termination.

A spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, where she has worked for nearly a decade, declined to comment.