To Err Is Human, To Defy Bove-ine

A bombshell whistleblower complaint sheds light on who in the Justice Department is allegedly driving open defiance of the courts

Photo of Emil Bove, by Jefferson Siegel for the New York Times

Federal judges around the country have been trying to get to the bottom of a key question in their fight to uphold the rule of law: who inside the Justice Department decided defying federal court orders would be standard practice? This has been going on and has appeared coordinated, but until now, no one knew who was behind it all.

A big clue dropped this week by way of an insider tell-all. It points directly at Emil Bove, one of Trump’s personal lawyers who was elevated to serve as a kind of henchman in the Justice Department.

As the New York Times reported, Erez Reuveni, a respected career attorney with 15 years at the Justice Department, blew the whistle on the question of court order defiance. He filed a 35-page complaint after being terminated for refusing to sign his name to a brief he believed contained untrue allegations.

In his complaint, Reuveni formally accuses senior Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security officials, as well as White House personnel, of deliberately violating court orders and misleading the judiciary, all to expedite the deportation of noncitizens and gum up the works for their return. Reuveni witnessed three instances where officials misrepresented facts or acted unethically, and each is damning.

Refusing to turn the planes around

Reuveni was on a team of government lawyers in the case challenging the removal of planeloads of immigrants to El Salvador in March. He alleges he “became aware of the plans of DOJ leadership to resist court orders that would impede potentially illegal efforts to deport noncitizens…”

Specifically, Reuveni was in a meeting in which Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider defying the courts and ignoring their orders. According to Reuveni’s complaint, Bove advised it was permissible to proceed with the deportations despite Judge James Boasberg’s verbal order to the contrary—so long as they did so before his written order appeared on the docket. (To any wondering, a verbal order is an order, good as any written one.)

The Times reported,

A pivotal meeting occurred on March 14, when Mr. Bove, a senior official in the deputy attorney general’s office, spoke bluntly about the administration’s plans. He informed his subordinates that Mr. Trump would soon invoke the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly fly a group of immigrants out of the country that weekend….

Mr. Bove “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what,” according to Mr. Reuveni’s account. Mr. Bove then broached “the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated.”

“Bove stated that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order,” according to the account. “Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room.”

In other words, a senior Trump official—Emil Bove—advised the lawyers in the room to defy federal court orders, even before they issued.

This is how it played out next. In an emergency hearing on the impending rendition flights, Judge Boasberg asked one of Reuveni’s superiors, attorney Drew Ensign, if any migrants would be put on planes “in the next 24 or 48 hours.” Ensign responded, “I don’t know the answer to that question.”

But that answer was a lie, according to Reuveni, who was listening by phone and sending updates to other lawyers. Per Reuveni, “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 [Alien Enemies Act] would be taking off over the weekend no matter what.” (Emphasis added.)

Reuveni tried hard to stop the planes and get them turned around. Per the Times,

At 6:44 p.m., Mr. Reuveni texted his supervisor, Mr. Flentje, referring to Mr. Bove’s disparaging remarks about the judicial system. Mr. Flentje, his account continued, “acknowledged Bove’s comment with a joke referencing the possibility that either he or Mr. Reuveni could be fired, impliedly for reporting up their chain of command concerns that a court order may have been violated.”

About 20 minutes later, Mr. Reuveni emailed D.H.S. and State Department officials that “no one subject to A.E.A. in our custody can be removed.”

The email continued: “And anyone in the air should be returned, unless they have” a different legal authorization for deportation. Lawyers for those two agencies did not respond to his email.

He followed up shortly after with another message, insisting, “we need to address this asap to avoid contempt,” but again, received no response.

If this account is proven out, Bove should be disbarred for his actions, and Ensign and others who went along should face disciplinary action at the very least. Aware of the implications of the allegations, the White House, through Bove’s superior Todd Blanche, slammed them as “falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee and then leaked to the press in violation of ethical obligations.” Blanche also questioned the timing of the complaint, which emerged a day after Bove’s confirmation hearing to become an appellate judge for the Third Circuit.

But the White House has two problems.

First, there were witnesses in the room where Bove told others they should ignore court orders. These included lawyers James McHenry and Paul Perkins as well as Reuveni’s supervisors, Drew Ensign and August Flentje, according to the complaint. Whether any would come forward to corroborate Reuveni’s account, even if compelled to under oath, remains to be seen, but there is a big risk of that happening.

Second, the complaint also contains a paper trail comprising emails and texts appearing to corroborate Reuveni’s account. For example, Reuveni received an email from Acting Assistant AG Yaakov Roth saying “Bove had advised D.H.S. that under the court order it was permissible to deplane individuals on the flights that departed U.S. airspace” so long as it was before Judge Boasberg’s written order showed up on the docket.

Reuveni no doubt knew his account would be flatly denied, so he named other names and came with plenty of receipts.

Kilmar Abrego García is no terrorist

Reuveni was also the attorney who informed the court that Kilmar Abrego García had been rendered to El Salvador in violation of a standing court order. This was the much reported “administrative error” that became a flashpoint and symbol of the Trump regime’s bad faith around migrant deportations.

The White House was furious Reuveni would admit to the error in court and even angrier he refused to argue Abrego García was a terrorist. The next day, Reuveni’s boss Ensign called him, at the prompting of the White House, to demand to know why he had not made the terrorism argument in court. Reuveni replied that there was no evidence to support that claim, and it wasn’t in any prior briefs. Also, declaring someone a terrorist, Reuveni added, doesn’t mean they don’t get due process—a position later vindicated by a unanimous Supreme Court decision.

The next day, the Justice Department tried to force Reuveni to sign a brief arguing Abrego García was a terrorist, saying “he had signed up for the responsibility to do so,” the complaint states.

Reuveni responded, “I didn’t sign up to lie.”

Stonewalling the courts

It wasn’t enough to openly defy Judge Boasberg’s order to turn the plane around. The Justice Department spent the next few weeks trying to keep the truth of what happened hidden.

Just days after he was openly defied, Judge Boasberg demanded the government explain when the planes had actually departed. The truth would later show the planes had plenty of time to turn around following the order. But the government didn’t want that to come out.

So what did it do? According to Reuveni, his superiors told him “that leadership at D.O.J. were reporting ‘down the chain’ that the government was not going to answer the court’s questions about anything that happened before 7:26 p.m. on March 15, and so not to provide information about when the flights took off.”

This was an unethical and possibly criminal plan to obstruct the judge’s inquiry. Reuveni tried, without success, to get any straight answers from anyone. The situation worsened when the government sent another 17 migrants on military planes from Guantanamo Bay to El Salvador. Reuveni was alarmed that this was in clear violation of court orders not to render any further individuals to CECOT in El Salvador.

Reuveni wrote, “The evidence demonstrates that senior D.O.J. leadership withheld information” from its own lawyers, and provided contrary instructions to other agencies, “which resulted in removals in violation of a court order.”

Emil Bove is a real piece of work

The Reuveni complaint adds significant, critical context behind how Bove drove the effort to defy the federal courts. But this isn’t the only recent instance where Bove has been in the news for deeply disturbing, unprofessional and unethical behavior.

In a OpEd in Bloomberg this week, former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade noted Bove was one of Trump’s criminal defense attorneys in his federal election interference and classified documents cases, which were dismissed after Trump won reelection. As a reward for his service, and to keep the Justice Department answerable to him politically, Trump appointed Bove to a top position to clean house:

He ordered the dismissal of eight FBI supervisors because he did not believe leadership could “trust these FBI employees to assist in implementing the President's agenda faithfully.” He demanded the names of all FBI personnel who worked on cases relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and later ordered the firing of dozens of prosecutors in the US Attorney’s office in DC who had been hired to work on the cases. And he directed “legal action” against state and local officials who impede federal immigration efforts.

Until now, perhaps the most concerning incident involving Bove was his role in the dismissal of bribery charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. In January, Bove directed Danielle Sassoon, the interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York, to dismiss the case. Sassoon, who had been hand-picked for the job by Trump, resigned over what she called “an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case,” describing it as “what amounted to a quid pro quo.”

Bove went before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week in connection with his appointment by Trump to be an appellate judge on the Third Circuit. Bove claimed he did not recall whether he’d ever suggested telling the courts “fuck you” in any manner.

Let’s be clear. This is a lie. If you ever made or did not make such statement, especially as lawyer, you would recall that. It defies common sense someone would not remember saying anything like that.

Bove doesn’t care, and neither do his enablers among Republicans in the Senate. They likely will confirm him to a lifetime position, even though he is everything the law demands lawyers never be.

The only comfort we might draw from this is that, as a judge, Bove will likely do far less damage to our legal system as a whole than he has while positioned within the Justice Department. And while Bove may avoid accountability so long as Trump is in power, history now has the goods on him. And for his contemptible and insupportable actions to undermine our judicial system, Bove will go down as one of the true villains of this era.

And Erez Reuveni will be remembered as one of its heroes.