Bulwark Takes - New Trump Scandal: Why Was Comey’s Daughter Fired?

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Tim and Sarah take on the abrupt firing of Maurene Comey, a top sex crimes prosecutor and daughter of former FBI Director James Comey. Comey was instrumental in taking down both Jeffrey Epstein AND Sean “Diddy” Combs, and her firing stinks of political retribution and makes the Epstein scandal even worse.

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I think that we could do some speculation here, which we're about to The notice was signed by a political appointee of President Trump So I want your I actually got to talk to Jim Comey about his daughter a little while ago So I want to play that tape for folks But first I'm curious Sarah your kind of top line thoughts when you saw the story come across I mean, here's what's crazy is that, and I didn't know this. Did you know this? That Comey's daughter, I guess you did when you talked to him, but that she prosecuted

both Epstein and Justly and Maxwell. And she was also on the Diddy trial because she does sex trafficking things. And so it feels like it is part of, there's like two ways you could go at this. Is it retribution against Comey, Jim Comey, who we now know they were trailing him after he posted that seashell like Instagram thing and everybody just said that, you know, made up this idea that somehow he was saying it was, you know, kill the president, which is absolutely not true. Guys 86 means to fire means to fire or to get rid of. That is not what it was. But so either it's retribution against him or because she has been on the Epstein beat and because her name is Comey and they don't trust her

to be a good soldier the way Pam Bondi and Cash Patel are being good soldiers, they wanted her out of there quickly. My only my my like knee-jerk reaction to that though is, do you want her outside able to talk? Like that feels, and I hope she, like can she talk now? That would be my hope is that we could actually hear from her. Yeah. Well, she put out a statement. I just, I'm just seeing this and it just came out a little bit ago. That was kind of a goodbye email to colleagues. When she was at DOJ, she wanted to make sure people with access to money and power were not treated differently than anyone else and making sure that this office

remains separate from politics and focused only on the facts and the law. She went on to say, fear is the tool of a tyrant. And I think it's not too hard to read between the lines there. So I, in a pretty strong statement against this, that at least from Maureen Comey's perspective, this was politics. They are trying to get politics. They're politicizing the Justice Department and they're trying to intimidate her and intimidate other people. I don't know how you could read this any other way. So I do hope that she continues to speak out. I think it's tough.

You leave these sorts of situations. I did the interview yesterday with Mike Feinberg. I got kicked out of the FBI and good on him for reaching out. But one of the things that he said in that interview was like, there are a lot of other people that have either been pushed out or nudged out or kicked out that haven't talked because it brings attention under you, might hurt your ability to get another job. Right. Like there are a lot of reasons not to do that. So there are more people being kicked out of DOJ and FBI than I think we even realize. But given the, I think the kind of bright light on her, I think it's

going to be kind of hard for her not to be public, but I don't know. Well, I do want to, can I just read more of her statement? Because her statement is excellent. It's like, fear is the tool of a tyrant wielded to suppress independent thought. Instead of fear, let this moment fuel the fire that already burns at the heart of this place, a fire of righteous indignation at abuses of power, of commitment to seek justice for victims of dedication to truth above all else." That's good stuff. And I think this is the beginning of something, not the end of something. And, you know, it's wild that she is the daughter of James Comey, and that all of life is a flat circle, man. These guys coming after her, and like, good on that statement. Like, that statement is

so powerful. And these guys are such cowards. Like, it is so pathetic. Because she used the word fear is exactly right. They're such like you can't work with Jim Comey's daughter. Right? Like that's really what this is, like, that they do not feel capable, you know, of like having a colleague who, you know, who has worked on a case that is, you know, maybe going to be politically uncomfortable for them, who has a father that has been, you know, vocal in opposition to the administration, but they're unable to put that aside and be

grownups and do the job of protecting the country and prosecuting bad guys and working alongside people that they're different from. Instead of that, what they would rather do is push anybody like that out and have only toadies around and consequences be damned. You know, these departments, these institutions, they run on professionalism, right? They run on those sort of professional codes. And this is like deeply unprofessional behavior.

They have given no reason for, I mean, by all means, if she's picking up these really big cases, she's a very good prosecutor. And so, like, you don't give those people, you don't give those cases to your, you know, screw-ups. You give them to your best people. So she's clearly- Also not like a space for nepo babies, you know?

Yeah, right. It's kind of like, you got to be able to actually get the convictions. That's right. You got to be able to, like, do the job. It's not like you're rising up through the ranks just because you're like your dad. And frankly, it probably hurt her. It doesn't help her. Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. There's no way that the name last name, Comey, now for her doesn't carry anything but like, not baggage exactly,

but like a, yeah, there's baggage. There's also the knowledge that, especially now that Trump's in office, that she would get undue scrutiny. And so... On this one, I want to play the clip because so when I had no thoughts about any of this, I interviewed Jim Comey, time is flat circle, like you said, could have been three months ago, could have been last week, I don't know. But at some point after he did- It was in between that.

I think it was like five weeks ago or something. last week, I don't know. But at some point after he did the seashell meme, he was on the podcast. And I asked him about his daughter because in the context of the Diddy case, since it was ongoing at the time. And I just want to play a little bit. Can you give me a brief? Have you been following her work? What's happening? What's the progress? Yeah, I follow it through the New York Times, does regular updates. They have people in the courtroom who send out little updates. So that's my way for following it. She won't talk to me about the case and won't let me go.

She will let my wife go and watch. But if I go, quote, it'll be a thing, dad, close quote. And so I don't get to go. But I follow it online because you can't. It's federal courts. There's no cameras. You're not getting real-time transcripts. So I follow it from the little snippets sent out by reporters. And how's she doing? She's doing great. She's really good and better than I. And her passion has been sex crimes, sex trafficking, working with victims.

She has a gift and I worry about it because that kind of stuff can really chew you up, but she has a gift. So I think she's doing very well. Well, that's cool though, that you get to kind of, even though you don't get to literally watch, because you don't want it to be a thing. It's cool to have a daughter that's doing that, right? You got to be brimming with pride. Yeah, I am.

I worried when she said she wanted to do it and that she would go where I worked as a federal prosecutor, as a line prosecutor, where I was the US attorney. And here's the true thing, I worried she would be known as my daughter. Honestly, I am known as her father. You can see that it's really kind of sad for me to rewatch that because you can see a dad that's beaming with pride and also a dad that like knows that he's a bit of baggage and was worried about that and was like really proud that like she was able to overcome that kind of because of her skill and how good of a prosecutor she is. And now like a month later to see that she still is getting targeted because these little

wannabe authoritarians can't handle it. Yeah. And I'll say one last thing about people who do the sex crimes work, which is what she does. When he is talking about she's got a gift. Think about that job. Think about the things you have to watch, the things you have to hear. It is the kind of thing that people, if you're a human being, like you think about these people's kind of cogs in a machine or their, this is their job. Like it impacts them. Like there's a whole network of like mental health professionals that are there

to work with the people who deal with sex crime stuff It's like it's a genuine public service like not everybody's looking to work in the sex crimes stuff because it's not a pleasant place to be and And all I can think is this is clearly a person with a lot of integrity who is good at her job And my hope is that with a statement like she put out after she left that she is somebody who becomes vocal about what happened, especially because the extent to which we have no information right now, I mean, and I think if we ever get information, you can't be able to trust it from Trump and the DOJ.

And there's nothing else that could even be, honestly. I don't know. The thing that I think about just listening to you talk right there about the sex crimes investigations and their work there and how hard and traumatic that is, how challenging it is to kind of hold these guys to account. Like we've seen, like the extensions of the Epstein case and other MeToo cases, like how hard it is, Donald Trump, how hard it is to get these people held to account and like you probably won't hear this from the

MAGA media because of her last name but to the extent that there is you know, kind of outside the political conversation around Epstein like a genuine feeling among people that sex criminals were getting away with it and powerful elite sex criminals were getting away with it and powerful elite sex criminals were getting away with it and they're being protected by other powerful elite people and that is an outrage and that is what under Gerd's gonna be outrage about Trump continuing to cover that up. Like this actually makes Epstein's

handle worse not because she knows any secret information because it's like once again shows these guys don't actually care about going after sex criminals. Like they don't care about accountability for any sort of elite powerful pedophiles because if they did, you would want somebody that's a good prosecutor who has experienced successfully prosecuting these cases in your government no matter what their last name is, you know? That's right. You got me riled up. I was already's right. You got me riled up. I was already mad.

But you got me riled up just talking about that. All right. Any final thoughts for Maureen Comey, our audience? Come on the show, Maureen. We would love to talk to you. We'd love to... America's looking for heroes right now, looking for brave people. I appreciate all the work that you've done up to this date, even if you don't come on

the podcast. But you should. It's a good podcast. It's a great podcast. We have a lot to say. We're incoming. Thank you, everybody else. Subscribe to the feed and we got a lot more coming.

So we'll see you soon. Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along. Which is why you should try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash zip. ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. Its powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So, while other companies might deliver a lot of hay, ZipRecruiter finds you what you're looking for.

The needle in the haystack. See why 4 out of 5 employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. And right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, free at ziprecruiter.com slash zip. That's ziprecruiter.com slash zip. Ziprecruiter.com slash zip.