Whistleblower Alleges Trump's DOJ Told Lawyers To Disobey Court Orders

WASHINGTON — Emil Bove, who is deputy attorney general and one of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, told Justice Department lawyers to say “fuck you” to judges who ruled against them, according to a complaint filed by ex-DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni.

Senior Justice Department lawyers, led by Bove, deliberately lied to federal judges and disobeyed their orders in the case involving the removal of hundreds of immigrants to a prison in El Salvador, according to a whistleblower complaint shared with Congress. The complaint was first reported by The New York Times.

The complaint filed by Reuveni, a highly praised career Justice Department lawyer who was fired after truthfully stating in court that the administration had wrongfully removed Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, alleges that “high level governmental personnel knowingly and willfully defied court orders, directed their subordinate attorneys to make misrepresentations to courts, and engaged in scheme to withhold relevant information from the court to advance the Administration’s priority of deporting noncitizens.” Reuveni is represented by Dana Gold and Andrea Meza of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistleblower legal group.

Bove, whom Trump has nominated for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, was the leader of this scheme within DOJ, according to Reuveni. At a meeting of senior DOJ leadership convened to discuss the Alien Enemies Act removals, Bove said they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore” any court order preventing the removal of immigrants to the prison in El Salvador, Reuveni’s complaint alleges. It also alleges that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign willfully lied to the court hearing the removal case as part of the scheme to deceive the court. Reuveni was also repeatedly pressured to lie to the court and ultimately fired for refusing to do so.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Reuveni’s claims are “utterly false” in a Tuesday post on social media.

“The New York Times article describes falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee and then leaked to the press in violation of ethical obligations,” Blanche wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The claims about Department of Justice leadership and the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General are utterly false which is likely why the author gave the Department of Justice 15 minutes this morning to respond (they wrote that we did not ‘immediately respond with a comment’) before releasing this garbage.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Emil Bove, Trump's deputy attorney general and one of his judicial nominees, allegedly told Justice Department lawyers to say “fuck you” to judges who ruled against them.

JEENAH MOON via Getty Images

News of Reuveni’s allegations comes a day before Bove is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his court appointment.

Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the top Democrat on the panel, said Tuesday that Reuveni’s allegations are more proof of how Bove has “abused his position” at the Justice Department. Bove previously ordered the firings of federal prosecutors who worked on criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, and ordered career prosecutors to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in a clear quid pro quo deal.

“These serious allegations, from a career Justice Department lawyer who defended the first Trump Administration’s immigration policies, not only speak to Mr. Bove’s failure to fulfill his ethical obligations as a lawyer, but demonstrate that his activities are part of a broader pattern by President Trump and his allies to undermine the Justice Department’s commitment to the rule of law,” Durbin said in a statement regarding Reuveni’s claims.

“I want to thank Mr. Reuveni for exercising his right to speak up and bring accountability to Mr. Bove,” said Durbin. “I implore my Senate Republican colleagues: do not turn a blind eye to the dire consequences of confirming Mr. Bove to a lifetime position as a circuit court judge.”

Notably, in his ethics disclosures filed to the committee ahead of his hearing, Bove did not commit to recusing himself from any future lawsuits involving Trump.

Instead, he pledged to recuse himself from “situations that present actual conflicts of interest based on my current or prior positions at the Department of Justice.” Here’s a screenshot of Bove’s comments to the committee regarding how he’d handle recusals as a judge, from his nomination form, a copy of which was obtained by HuffPost.

Donald Trump's judicial nominee Emil Bove did not commit to recusing himself from cases involving his former client, Donald Trump.

Senate Judiciary Committee

The actions alleged by Reuveni took place after Trump designated members of two gangs as “alien enemies” under the Alien Enemies Act on March 14. This designation presumably eased the ability of the administration to round up and remove immigrants from the country. The administration quickly began gathering hundreds of Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants it claimed were gang members, often with flimsy or no evidence, and putting them on planes for removal to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador.

That same day, Ensign invited Reuveni to a meeting that included Bove and other senior DOJ leaders where it was stated that Alien Enemies Act removals would begin on March 15 and 16. During the meeting, per the complaint, Bove raised the possibility that a court would block the removals and told the attendees they may need to ignore the court’s orders and tell any judge “fuck you” if they ruled against the administration.

“Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room,” Reuveni’s complaint states. “Silence overtook the room.”

The room looked stunned “because, to Mr. Reuveni’s knowledge, no one in DOJ leadership ― in any Administration — had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with a ‘fuck you.’”

Reuveni’s stunned “disbelief,” however, “is now a relic of a different time,” according to his complaint. Following this meeting, he witnessed senior DOJ leaders lie to judges and disobey court orders in three separate cases, he alleges.

In J.G.G. v. Trump, the first case that spun out of the removals to El Salvador, Ensign lied to Judge James Boasberg during a preliminary hearing on March 15 as the administration was in the process of removing those labeled alien enemies to CECOT, Reuveni alleges. When Boasberg asked Ensign if the removals would take place “in the next 24 or 48 hours,” Ensign stated, “I don’t know the answer to that question” and added that he would “investigate” that and “report that back to you.”

“Mr. Reuveni reasonably believes Ensign’s statement to the court that he did not know whether AEA removals would take place ‘in the next 24 or 48 hours’ was false,” Reuveni’s complaint states. “Ensign had been present in the previous day’s meeting when Emil Bove stated clearly that one or more planes containing individuals subject to the AEA would be taking off over the weekend no matter what.”

The DOJ whistleblower was fired after he refused to sign a legal filing accusing Kilmar Abrego Garcia of being a gang "leader" and terrorist.

Genaro Molina via Getty Images

Boasberg adjourned the hearing for a short period of time to allow Ensign to investigate. The removal flights took off during this adjournment. When the court reconvened, Ensign continued to claim that he had no information on the flights. Lawyers for immigrant plaintiffs informed the court that public flight data showed that two removal flights had taken off and a third would leave soon. Shortly thereafter, Boasberg issued a verbal order for the flights to return or not take off. But the administration did not comply with this order.

Reuveni states that, as this happened, he sent numerous emails to Justice Department, State Department and Department of Homeland Security leadership informing them of Boasberg’s order, including one at 7:04 p.m. stating, “No one subject to AEA in our custody can be removed. And anyone in the air should be returned, unless they have a title 8 final order. Please confirm receipt and let us know what if anything is happening. Thank you.” No one responded, and Reuveni found out on March 16 that the detainees had been deplaned in El Salvador and imprisoned at CECOT against the court’s orders.

Reuveni learned that day that Bove was behind the alleged order to disobey Boasberg, as he “had advised DHS that under the court order it was permissible to deplane individuals on the flights that departed U.S. airspace before the minute order had issued on the docket.”

One of the people on those flights was Abrego Garcia, who had previously received a withholding removal order preventing him from being deported to El Salvador based on his fears he could face harm from gang violence. Wrongful deportations such as Abrego Garcia’s can happen under normal circumstances, and are usually corrected by returning the person back to the U.S. But the Trump administration did not want to do that in this case and so sought to fabricate accusations that Abrego Garcia was a high-level gang “leader” and, under executive orders issued by Trump, a member of a foreign terrorist organization, according to Reuveni.

Reuveni claims he continued to push DHS and State Department lawyers for information on how they would return Abrego Garcia, but was ultimately told by DOJ leadership, including Ensign and Assistant Attorney General Yaakov Roth, to “stop asking for facts supporting any possible defense of the case.”

During an April 4 hearing in Abrego Garcia’s case, Reuveni informed Judge Paula Xinis that Abrego Garcia had been removed “in error,” as confirmed by a declaration from Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Robert Cerna.

Ensign then called Reuveni to ask why he had not called Abrego Garcia a terrorist and said he was wrongfully removed. These questions came directly from the White House, Ensign said. There was no evidence that Abrego Garcia was a gang leader or a terrorist, and that would have no bearing on his withholding removal order anyway, Reuveni replied.

Reuveni claims he received a copy of a brief later that evening that he was ordered to sign that made these arguments to the court. He refused, telling his boss, “I didn’t sign up to lie.” The next day, April 5, Reuveni was placed on administrative leave and subsequently fired on April 11.

The administration eventually returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. on June 6 to face trafficking charges in Tennessee.

Prior to his firing, Reuveni alleges, he was also directed to disobey a court order in the case of D.V.D. v. DHS, where a judge ruled that the administration could not deport immigrants to countries that were not their country of origin without telling them where they would be deported to and providing them with a fear assessment to determine if they faced potential harm or torture in those countries.

Reuveni’s complaint states DHS and DOJ leadership suppressed DHS guidance that the judge had issued a nationwide injunction and instead pretended that the decision was “ambiguous” and only applied to the three named plaintiffs. The decision to not circulate this guidance came from Bove’s office, Reuveni states that Ensign told him. Removals in violation of the order continued as the guidance to stop them had not been circulated.

As Reuveni sought to find out why guidance had not been disseminated, he was told repeatedly to stop asking questions. On April 1, Roth called Reuveni to tell him “that Bove was very unhappy that Mr. Reuveni had contacted counsel at various agencies to ascertain whether DOJ had violated court order.”

“Roth conveyed that Mr. Reuveni should stop emailing agency counsel on the matter to instead communicate by phone only where possible,” the complaint states. “Mr. Reuveni understood this instruction to be based on leadership’s aim to avoid generating written material subject to disclosure through [the Freedom of Information Act].”

Throughout all of these episodes, Reuveni says he reported to his supervisors that he believed he was being asked to violate his professional and legal obligations as a lawyer. His firing, therefore, constituted illegal retaliation under whistleblower protection laws, he asserts.

Since Reuveni’s firing, high-level Trump administration officials have cast him as a disloyal partisan. He was a “saboteur, a Democrat,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said in April on Fox News. In his complaint, Reuveni, however, recounts his 15-year stint as a nonpartisan lawyer who was praised and promoted through multiple administrations, including Trump’s first term where his performance review stated he was an “outstanding attorney, legal writer, and oral advocate” who handles the “most difficult and highest profile cases.” He received his latest promotion on March 14.

“Mr. Reuveni refuses to stay silent despite the retaliation he has already faced and the serious risk of additional retaliation for his choice to continue to exercise his rights,” the complaint states. “The consequences of DOJ’s actions Mr. Reuveni reports have grave impacts not only for the safety of individuals removed from the country in violation of court orders, but also for the constitutional rights and protections of all persons citizen and noncitizen alike who are potential victims of flagrant deliberate disregard of due process and the rule of law by the agency charged with upholding it.”