Epstein Scandal: Firing of Maurene Comey and probable Grand Jury Investigation of Donald Trump

In this article I will take a look at the context of the firing of US Assistant Attorney Maurene Comey in the midst of the Epstein Scandal that has gone supernova.

BACKGROUND MAURENE COMEY

Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Maurene Comey, right, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe enter the courthouse ahead of a bail hearing in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking case in New York City on July 15, 2019. Because of his death in the lockup, Epstein’s trial never occurred. They are now working on the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell. Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article256051297herald.com/news/local/crime/article256051297.html

Maurene Comey graduated from William and Mary in 2010 and went on to receive a degree in Law from Harvard in 2013. She joined the US Attorneys Office in the Southern District of New York in 2014, and was soon promoted to prosecutor and Assistant U.S. Attorney. She played a major role in the Grand Jury investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators and subsequent charges against Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

2007 GRAND JURY INVESTIGATION OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN AND CO-CONSPIRATORS AND NON-PROSECUTION AGREEMENT

On September 24, 2007 a non-prosecution agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and Jeffrey Epstein, and his co-conspirators was finalized. (1)

The deal was signed after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned on August 27, 2007, effective September 17, 2007. Under the terms of the deal, the US Department of Justice agreed to cease their Grand Jury investigation of Epstein, not bring any Federal charges against Epstein, and allow the state of Florida charge him with misdemeanors. In exchange for the non-prosecution agreement, Epstein provided unidentifed information to the FBI. (2).

NULLIFICATION OF EPSTEIN/DOJ NON-PROSECUTION AGREEMENT

In March 2011, Jane Does #1 and #2 sued the United States in the Southern District of Florida for violating the Justice for All Act of 2004, otherwise known as the Crime Victims Reporting Act (CVRA). The CVRA forbids negotiating secret deals with criminal defendants without informing the victims. Jane Does #3 and #4 joined the suit later.

It was a long and difficult legal battle, but ultimately the Jane Does won.

A ruling of Judge Kenneth Marra, in the Southern District of Florida, in February 2019 essentially nullified the NPA between the DOJ and Epstein. (3).

THE 2019-2020 GRAND JURY INVESTIGATION OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN AND CO-CONSPIRATORS

Judge Marra’s February 2019 ruling cleared the way for US Attorneys to prosecute Epstein. The date when the latest Grand Jury investigation of Epstein began has not been made public yet in any documents that I have reviewed.

Epstein’s residence in Manhattan was searched for evidence on July 6, 2019. On July 8, 2019 the Southern District of New York charged Jeffrey Epstein with sex trafficking of minors. The quick charges after Marra’s ruling imply that the charges may have been based in part on evidence gathered in the 2007 Grand Jury investigation, but they also clearly developed a lot of information in the Grand Jury investigation that began sometime in 2019.

Ghislaine Maxwell was charged on July 2, 2020. In response to a motion by Maxwell’s legal defense team to unseal information, the SDNY replied, in part, on August 21, 2020, that there was still an active Grand Jury investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators:

“As the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has stated publicly, the investigation into the conduct of the defendant in this case and other possible co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein remains active. The full scope and details of that investigation, however, have not been made public.” (4).

That’s co-conspirators, Plural.

THE CHAIN OF POSSESSION OF EPSTEIN FILES EVIDENCE

Pam Bondi assumed the office of US Attorney General on February 5, 2025 and released what she described as “Phase 1” of declassified Epstein files on February 27, 2025. In a letter to Kash Patel, also on February 27, Bondi told the FBI Director that an unidentified source told her that the FBI had withheld documents from her, demanded an accounting from the FBI Director, and demanded that the documents be provided to her by the following morning.

From her February 27 letter to Patel: “The Attorney General has requested the FBI deliver the remaining documents to the Department by 8:00 AM on February 28 and has tasked FBI Director Kash Patel with investigating why the request for all documents was not followed.”

Bondi told Sean Hannity on March 3: “And so a source said whoa all this evidence is sitting in the Southern District of New York. So based on that I gave them the deadline. Friday at 8 A.M. a truckload of evidence arrived.”

Bondi didn’t exactly say that the SDNY had withheld the evidence. It is possible, in my estimation, that the FBI somehow gained control of the Jeffrey Epstein Grand Jury investigation information in the Southern District of New York and classified it as “National Security” information exempt from public disclosure, including criminal prosecutions.

In 2005, President George Bush made a series of Executive Orders that diminished differences between the FBI and the CIA, restricted access to “National Security” information, and created the National Security Branch of the FBI. This was done to censor potential future investigations on the US and Israeli government’s roles in 9/11, in my opinion, but the tactic could be applied elsewhere, such as child sex trafficking, or any other crime that involves the government.

PAM BONDI ORDERS REPORT ON INSUBORDINATION WITHIN DOJ

On February 27, Bondi ordered the FBI Director to provide a report to her on why the information she requested on Epstein was withheld from her.

“I am also directing you to conduct an immediate investigation into why my order to the FBI was not followed. You will deliver to me a comprehensive report of your findings and proposed personnel action within 14 days.”

The deadline on that report has long passed. I think that Director Patel likely followed Bondi’s directive and provided Bondi’s requested report on the evidence chain to her. I believe that Bondi should in turn provide that report to the public. I would not object to redactions of the names of individuals within the report, but the complex chain of evidence handling within the Department of Justice that denied evidence to even the Attorney General needs to be fully explained. If Bondi won’t provide Patel’s explanation to the public, I think that Congress demands it from her and/or conduct their own independent investigation.

PAM BONDI: BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “SITTING ON (SDNY GRAND JURY EVIDENCE)”

In Bondi’s February 27 letter to Director Patel, she said she had been informed of thousands of pages of documents related to the Southern District of New York’s Grand Jury investigation and subsequent indictment of Jeffrey Epstein:

Attorney General Bondi requested the full and complete files related to Jeffrey Epstein. In response, the Department received approximately 200 pages of documents, however, the Attorney General was later informed of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein that were not previously disclosed.

Bondi told Sean Hannity that the Biden Administration was sitting on the documents from the Southern District of New York.

The Biden Administration sat on these documents. No one did anything. And why were they sitting in the Southern District of New York? I want a full report on that.

The lack of further prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators does coincide with the tenure of Merrick Garland as Attorney General. After Judge Marra’s ruling of February 2019, and the apparent subsequent Grand Jury investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators, the Southern District of New York charged Jeffrey Epstein on July 8, 2019 and charged Ghislaine Maxwell on July 2, 2020. On August 21, 2020, SDNY said the Grand Jury investigation was still active and involved other possible co-conspirators. SDNY issued a superseding indictment against Ghislaine on March 30, 2021.

Merrick Garland assumed the Attorney General's office on March 31, 2021. Damian Williams, a former law clerk of Merrick Garland, was nominated by President Biden to lead the SDNY in August 2021. There were no further criminal charges against Epstein’s co-conspirators from the SDNY during the tenures of Merrick Garland and Damian Williams.

POSSIBLE GRAND JURY INVESTIGATION OF DONALD TRUMP AS EPSTEIN CO-CONSPIRATOR

The Department of Justice has made an effort to identify all the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators. Initially the list of victims from law enforcement investigations in Florida was in the 40s. In Bondi’s February 27 letter to Director Patel she said the number of identified victims was “over 250.” An untitled, unsigned July 5, 2025 release from an unidentified entity of the Department of Justice stated: “this review confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims.”

The DOJ’s unsigned July, 2025 release also said that “this material,” meaning images and videos, was sealed by a Court. They also said this material “did not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing.”

The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography. Teams of agents, analysts, attorneys, and privacy and civil liberties experts combed through the digital and documentary evidence with the aim of providing as much information as possible to the public while simultaneously protecting victims. Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing. Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing.

Journalist Michael Wolff, however, reported that Jeffrey Epstein showed him pictures of Donald Trump and minors in an illegal circumstance that were taken at Epstein’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida- evidence that was likely seized by the FBI in the July 6, 2019 search of Epstein’s residence in Manhattan.

In their efforts to identify Epstein’s victims, it would have been negligent for the Department of Justice not to investigate claims made against Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump in a rape lawsuit filed in June 2016 in the US District Court of the Southern District of New York.

Allegations in the suit involved sexual assaults against 12 and 13 year-old girls at Jeffrey Epstein's residence in Manhattan in 1994. Tiffany Doe attested that she witnessed the assaults. (5, 6).

In United States v. Ghislaine Maxwell, the SDNY developed information to support criminal charges against Ghislaine for transporting a minor, Jane Doe, 1994-1997. (7). SDNY presented Epstein’s flight logs in this period in support of the charges. Those same flight logs also show that Donald Trump was a passenger on Epstein’s plane in 1994.

Donald Trump’s flights on Epstein’s jet coincide with Epstein’s and Trump’s alleged assaults that occurred in 1994 that are detailed in the 2016 Trump/Epstein rape lawsuit, in my estimation.

FIRING OF MAUREEN COMEY AND TRUMP’S COMMENTS ON “COMEY”

After the Epstein Scandal hit the fan in a July 8, 2025 press conference, where Trump berated a reporter for asking questions about Epstein, angering his supporters, Trump went from accepting the role of a hero that would take down the child sex trafficking network as narrated in QAnon releases, to describing the Epstein Files as a “Democratic hoax” perpetuated by “radical leftists” similar to the discredited Steele Dossier.

Donald Trump said “these files were made up by Comey” on July 11, 2025. While various media outlets have referred to Trump’s remarks on Comey as referencing James Comey, FBI Director James Comey was fired by President Trump on May 9, 2017 and has not held any position in the government since. Maurene Comey was one of the lead prosecutors in the SDNY’s Grand Jury investigation and prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators in 2019-2020.

No one in the government has yet confirmed or denied that the SDNY Grand Jury investigated potential crimes of Donald Trump, but Trump’s recent remarks, Maurene’s role in the Grand Jury investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators, the 2016 rape lawsuit against Trump and Epstein, and the firing of Maurene Comey strongly suggest it. Maurene was fired without explanation on July 16, 2025. Her letter to her colleagues at the Southern District of New York is below.

"Yesterday was unexpectedly my last day in the Office. I was summarily fired via memo from Main Justice that did not give a reason for my termination.

Every person lucky enough to work in this office constantly hears four words to describe our ethos:

Without Fear or Favor. Do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons without fear of retribution and without favor to the powerful.

For the majority of my nearly ten years in SDNY, the hard part seemed to be acting “without favor.”

That is, making sure people with access, money, and power were not treated differently than anyone else; and making sure this office remained separate from politics and focused only on the facts and the law.

Fear was never really conceivable.

We don’t fear bad press; we have the luxury of exceptional security keeping us physically safe; and, so long as we did our work with integrity, we would get to keep serving the public in this office.

But we have entered a new phase where “without fear” may be the challenge.

If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain.

Do not let that happen.

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.

It has been an honor to fight for those principles by your side.

Maurene"

REFERENCES

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