CNBC: A fired Department of Justice lawyer says that a top DOJ official Emil Bove — whom President Donald Trump has nominated to become a federal appeals court judge — told department attorneys to consider telling judges “f—k you” and ignoring any court order that barred the Trump administration from deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
Bove, during a March 14 meeting with the whistleblower, Erez Reuveni and other DOJ attorneys, “stressed to all in attendance that the planes [carrying the immigrants] needed to take off no matter what,” according to a letter Tuesday from Reuveni’s lawyers at the Government Accountability Project.
The letter was sent to the DOJ’s internal watchdog and top members of Congress a day before Bove — who previously acted as Trump’s criminal defense lawyer — is due to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing on his nomination to become a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
It comes as several federal judges have raised concerns that the DOJ has misled them, failed to comply with court orders, and deliberately delayed responding to requests for information relating to Trump administration efforts to summarily deport undocumented immigrants without due process.
The letter was first reported by The New York Times.
The letter says that Reuveni, who told a judge that the administration made a mistake in deporting Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a notorious prison in El Salvador despite a court order barring his removal to that country, was “thwarted, threatened, fired and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court.”
Reuveni, who was acting deputy director for the DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation, after the meeting with Bove was involved in three separate cases involving the legality of immigration removal operations, the letter said.
During that time, he witnessed and reported “DOJ officials underming rthe rule of law by ignoring court orders” ; “presenting ‘legal’ arguments with no basis in law”; saw high-ranking DOJ and Homeland Security officials “misrepresenting facts presented before courts” ; and had DOJ officials direct him to “misrepresent facts in one of these cases in violation of Mr. Reuveni’s legal and ethical duties,” the letter said.
Reuveni was placed on administrative leave on April 5 and fired six days later, according to his lawyers, who said he was terminated for refusing to file legal briefs that contained misrepresentations and for telling the truth to a federal judge about Abrego’s deportation being carried out in error.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, in a statement Tuesday said, “As a senior Justice Department official, Mr. Bove has abused his position in numerous ways, including firing January 6 prosecutors and agents and ordering career prosecutors to dismiss charges against Eric Adams for blatantly corrupt reasons, among other troubling actions.”
“And now, we have Mr. Reuveni, a 14-year career attorney at DOJ, coming forward under the Whistleblower Act to shine a further light on Mr. Bove’s alleged misconduct,” Durbin said.
