Fired Justice Department lawyer accuses agency of planning to defy court orders : NPR

A longtime government lawyer told Congress that Justice Department leaders planned to knowingly defy court orders and withhold information from judges to advance the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation goals, according to a newly published whistleblower complaint.

The lawyer, Erez Reuveni, previously won awards and commendations over nearly 15 years at the Justice Department, including from Republican appointees in the first Trump administration. But he was put on leave and then fired in April after he told a federal judge an immigrant had been deported in error.

Reuveni ultimately decided to blow the whistle to lawmakers and watchdogs at the Justice Department and the Office of Special Counsel, detailing what he called defiance and noncompliance in three separate immigration cases this year. His accusations add to broader concern about the Trump administration’s repeated clashes with the judiciary over immigration and other policies.

“Discouraging clients from engaging in illegal conduct is an important part of the role of a lawyer,” his attorneys wrote in the complaint. “Mr. Reuveni tried to do so and was thwarted, threatened, fired, and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court.”

News of the complaint, first reported by The New York Times, comes a day before senior Justice Department official Emil Bove is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Bove is President Trump’s nominee to serve as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, a post that carries a lifetime appointment.

Bove also is a former personal lawyer to Trump. He worked alongside now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to defend Trump in four separate criminal cases. Blanche issued a statement calling Reuveni’s claims “utterly false.”

In the new filing, Reuveni disclosed a meeting inside the Justice Department on March 14, shortly before Trump formally declared he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members and fly them to El Salvador.

At that meeting, the whistleblower complaint said, Bove “stressed to all in attendance that the planes need to take off no matter what.” Bove then said that the group may need to consider telling judges “f*** you” and ignore possible court orders blocking immigrants from being removed from the U.S., according to the document.

That account calls into question several representations others inside the Justice Department have made to U.S. District Judge James Boasberg about when planes carrying migrants took off and passed through U.S. airspace before they landed in El Salvador.

The deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said, “I was at the meeting described in the article and at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.”

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., thanked Reuveni for speaking up. Durbin, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the new allegations add to a “troubling” list of actions by Bove, who also pushed to fire prosecutors who worked on Capitol riot cases and to back away from the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

“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.

Durbin added that confirming Bove to a lifetime-tenured judicial seat could have “dire consequences.”
 
Reuveni’s complaint could reverberate far beyond Capitol Hill, since courts across the nation continue to consider the legality of Trump’s speedy deportations.

Reuveni’s attorneys, Dana Gold and Andrea Meza at the Government Accountability Project and Kevin Owen at Gilbert Employment Law, said the Justice Department actions “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.”