Judge to review Maurene Comey’s wrongful termination case against Trump administration
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(NEW YORK) — Former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey and the Trump administration have not talked about settling her civil lawsuit and do not believe alternatives to a trial “would be useful at this time,” the parties told the judge in a letter on Monday.
Comey is suing over her firing, arguing she was “abruptly and wrongfully terminated” because her father is former FBI director James Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs.
In the letter, her lawyers and the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York, which is handling the case for the Justice Department, affirmed the need for a conference with the judge, which is currently scheduled for Thursday.
Comey wants the judge to order the government to begin producing evidence. Government lawyers are expected to ask the judge for time to file a motion to dismiss the case.
The defense said the proper place for Comey to argue is not in court, but before the Merit Systems Protection Board. Comey’s attorneys said her case presents “novel” issues about executive power that a judge must resolve.
“While there are cases that discuss a President’s authority under Article II to remove Principal Officers and Inferior Officers, we are unaware of any decision that discusses (let alone approves of) a President’s use of Article II authority to remove without cause a non-officer civil service employee such as a line-level Assistant United States Attorney, in direct violation of the CSRA and the Bill of Rights,” Comey’s attorneys, Nicole Gueron, Ellen Blain, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan wrote.
The defense characterized Comey’s case as routine.
“A federal employee’s claims that removal from federal service was arbitrary and capricious or conducted in a manner that did not provide the process to which they contend they were due is not a novel issue,” government attorneys said.
The letter said there are no meaningful settlement talks, and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms would be unhelpful at the moment.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at a news conference October 06, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. Scott Olson/Getty Images
(CHICAGO) — Members of the Texas National Guard have arrived in Illinois, according to sources familiar with their whereabouts and video taken of them at an Army Reserve training facility in a Chicago suburb.
The Texas National Guard boarded a military plane on Monday afternoon in Texas, as state and city leaders in Illinois were holding a news conference asking them to stay away from Chicago.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday shared a photo on social media showing what he called the state’s “elite” National Guard boarding a plane, but he did not say where they were headed.
“Illinois will not let the Trump administration continue on their authoritarian march without resisting,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said. “We will use every lever at our disposal to stop this power grab because military troops should not be used against American communities.”
Pritzker said at a news conference on Monday that over the weekend, he called on Abbott “to immediately withdraw his support of this decision” to send the Texas National Guard members to Chicago.
Earlier Tuesday, Abbott had replied to Pritzker on social media, saying, “I fully authorized the President to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials.”
During a news conference on Tuesday morning, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he had not received no advance information on the whereabouts of the Texas National Guard troops.
“We have not heard directly, of course, from the president or his administration and my expectation is that, regardless of what this administration is doing, I’m going to remain firm and committed to protecting the rights and the civility of our nation and will start right here in Chicago,” Johnson said.
“We do know that much like what we’ve seen in other parts of the country, there is a process that the National Guard goes through before they’re actually released into the streets of Chicago or anywhere,” Johnson added.
Johnson said that what he does know is that the deployment of National Guard troops in Chicago is “illegal, unconstitutional, it’s dangerous, it’s wrong.”
The state of Illinois and city of Chicago filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to block the federalization and deployment of the National Guard.
The foundational principle separating the military from domestic affairs is “in peril” as Trump seeks to deploy the National Guard to cities across the country, lawyers for Illinois and Chicago wrote in the lawsuit.
“Let me be clear, Donald Trump is using our service members as political props and as pawns in his illegal effort to militarize our nation’s cities,” Pritzker said during a news conference.
To support his point, Pritzker played a video of an ICE raid conducted last week on an apartment complex in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, which he claimed was filmed by federal authorities with high-definition cameras for social media purposes. He said it was the same video that Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted on social media on Saturday.
“They brought Black Hawk military helicopters and more than 100 agents in full tactical gear,” Pritzker said.
He added, “In the dead of night and seemingly for the cameras, armed federal agents emerged from the Black Hawk helicopters, rappelling onto the roof of that apartment building.”
The governor alleged the Trump administration is following a playbook to “cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send military troops to our city,” Pritzker said.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, Trump said he did not yet see the need to use the Insurrection Act, but “if I had to enact it, I’d do it, if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”
U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during a meeting at the 80th session of the UN’s General Assembly (UNGA) at the United Nations headquarters on September 23, 2025 in New York City. World leaders convened for the 80th Session of UNGA, with this year’s theme for the annual global meeting being “Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights.” (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump, who took office in January with a pledge to seek retribution against his political foes, made clearer than ever his eagerness to use the weight of the Justice Department against his perceived enemies this week.
Asked by reporters Friday who was next on his list a day after the DOJ brought a two-count indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, Trump said, “It’s not a list — but I think there will be others.”
Comey, who Trump fired from his post in 2017, had been a target of Trump since he oversaw the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey,” Trump wrote on social media following Thursday’s indictment. “He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”
The former FBI chief has been charged with making a false statement to Congress and obstruction of an investigative proceeding before Congress, related to his 2020 congressional testimony regarding the FBI’s Russia probe.
Comey, who said in a statement that he was innocent of the charges, said in an Instagram video, “My family and I have known for years that there are costs for standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees and you shouldn’t either.”
The charges were brought by the newly appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, former White House aide Lindsey Halligan, who took over the role after Trump ousted U.S. attorney Erik Siebert after sources say Siebert expressed doubts internally about bringing a case against Comey.
“What they did was so terrible and so corrupt,” Trump told Fox News Digital on Thursday, referring to those involved in the Russia probe. “Comey placed a cloud over the entire nation.”
Trump, in the same interview, hinted at potentially charging former CIA Director John Brennan in relation to the Russia probe.
“We’ll have to see what happens. It is up to the Justice Department, but I can tell you, it is a group of people that was very disappointing,” Trump said. “This makes Watergate look like peanuts.”
Comey’s indictment came just days after top federal prosecutors at U.S. attorney’s offices around the country received a directive to prepare to launch investigations into the Open Society Foundations, a group funded by the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, on potential charges ranging from support of terrorism to racketeering, sources told ABC News.
“This DOJ, along with our hard-working and dedicated U.S. Attorneys, will always prioritize public safety and investigate organizations that conspire to commit acts of violence or other federal violations of law,” a DOJ spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the Open Society Foundations called the accusations “politically motivated attacks.”
FBI Director Kash Patel disputed accusations that the DOJ’s probes were motivated by politics.
“Career FBI agents, intel analysts, and staff led the investigation into Comey and others,” he posted online Friday. “They called the balls and strikes and will continue to do so. The wildly false accusations attacking this FBI for the politicization of law enforcement comes from the same bankrupt media that sold the world on Russia Gate — it’s hypocrisy on steroids.”
Democrats like Sen. Peter Welch weren’t buying it.
“President Trump and his Justice Department’s indictment of James Comey is a new low for our democracy. The reason for the indictment is clear: Comey is Trump’s political adversary,” Welch wrote on X.
Asked by reporters about the indictment on Friday, Trump said, “They weaponized the Justice Department like nobody in history. What they’ve done is terrible. And so I hope — frankly, I hope there are others, because you can’t let this happen to a country.”
“It’s about justice, not revenge,” Trump said. “It’s about justice.”
ABC News’ Rachel Scott contributed to this report.
The Aurora Borealis lights up the night sky over Monroe, Wisconsin, on November 11, 2025. (Ross Harried/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Dazzling waves of color are lighting up the skies this week.
After green and pink displays of auroras lit up the sky Tuesday night, another Northern Light array is expected to bring a gleaming light show to the northern part of the U.S. Wednesday night.
The auroras are being caused by one of the strongest geomagnetic storms of the year, which occurs when electrons from the sun collide with Earth’s magnetic field to produce colored lights, according to NOAA.
“Aurora is the name given to the glow or light produced when electrons from space flow down Earth’s magnetic field and collide with atoms and molecules of the upper atmosphere in a ring or oval centered on the magnetic pole of Earth. The collisions produce light much like how electrons flowing through gas in a neon light collide with neon and other gasses to produce different colored light bulbs,” NOAA’s website reads.
Two dozen states could see the Northern Lights Wednesday night per NOAA’s aurora viewline map that includes Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
Mike Bettwy, a meteorologist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, told ABC News that the auroras on Wednesday could be as clear as the ones on Tuesday.
“We had three coronal mass ejections leave the Sun since late last week. The third and final one is expected to impact our atmosphere later today and tonight. It is difficult to predict with a high degree of certainty or precision, but it is possible this will be as impactful as last night’s event. There were reports of aurora as far south as Tampa, Florida, overnight,” Bettwy said.
“While not unprecedented, it is quite unusual for the aurora to be visible at these low latitudes; probably only occurring once or twice per solar cycle,” he added.
The best time to see the aurora is between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., according to NOAA.
NASA recommends going to the darkest area and using a long exposure to get the best photos of the light show, per their guidance.
NASA did not immediately reply to requests for comment from ABC News.
