DOJ whistleblower says Third Circuit nominee suggested violating court orders in Trump deportation case

WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump’s nominee for a key appellate court vacancy and a top Justice Department official told colleagues that the agency might have to tell a federal court “fuck you” if it wanted to carry out the White House’s mass deportation operations, according to a whistleblower report released Tuesday.

Emil Bove, nominated to the Third Circuit, also used his position as principal associate deputy attorney general to advise the Homeland Security Department that it could deplane migrants deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order requiring deportation flights to turn around, the report said.

The accusations from Erez Reuveni, a former Justice Department attorney fired in April, come as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to question Bove in a forthcoming nomination hearing.

Reuveni told lawmakers in his report, first reported by the New York Times, that he had been involved in the March lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s effort to deport five Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.

At the time, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg had issued a temporary restraining order against the deportations, demanding that any flights carrying the migrants turn around and return to the U.S. The Barack Obama appointee’s ruling was later struck down by the Supreme Court.

But the Justice Department and Drew Ensign, the agency’s deputy assistant attorney general for immigration litigation, misled the court about the status of deportation flights, Reuveni said. Ensign had told Boasberg during a March 16 hearing that he didn’t know whether removal flights were imminent.

The whistleblower, however, said that Ensign had been present in a meeting the day before where Bove told him that deportation flights would be taking off “no matter what.”

Bove had previously expressed a willingness to ignore a federal court’s order to implement the Trump administration’s deportation agenda, Reuveni told the Senate. During a March 14 meeting, the top Justice Department official reportedly said that it might become necessary to tell a court “fuck you” in order for removal flights to continue.

As it became clear that Boasberg was going to issue a restraining order on deportation flights, Reuveni and his supervisor joked over text about Bove’s comment, saying that they could be fired “impliedly for reporting up their chain of command concerns that a court order may have been violated.”

And, according to the report, Bove also informed the Homeland Security Department that it would not violate Boasberg’s restraining order if it deplaned two deportation flights that had already landed in El Salvador, despite concerns from Reuveni that the move would push the federal judge to hold the government in contempt of court.

The Justice Department had initially intended to file a notice to the court, signed by Bove, which explained that deplaning the flights would not violate the restraining order because the planes “left U.S. airspace before the court’s written minute order,” Reuveni said. The agency, though, did not end up filing such a notice.

Reuveni, for his part, was fired by the Justice Department in April over his involvement in a separate immigration case regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man whom the Trump administration admitted it had wrongly deported and who has since been returned to the U.S. to face human trafficking charges.

The former federal attorney was placed on administrative leave and ultimately terminated after he “candidly and truthfully” informed a federal court that Abrego Garcia had been removed from the U.S. by mistake. Reuveni was raked over the coals by White House officials at the time, including Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who called him a “saboteur” and a “Democrat.” The president himself said that Reuveni “should not have said” that Abrego Garcia had been deported in error.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche offered a scathing rebuke to the whistleblower report, writing in a Tuesday post on X that the allegations were “falsehoods” made by a disgruntled former employee and then “leaked to the press in violation of ethical violations.”

“Note that not a single individual except the disgruntled former employee agrees with the statements cavalierly printed by this purported news outlet,” Blanche said of the Times report. “I was at the meeting described in this article and at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.”

In a statement Tuesday alongside a copy of the whistleblower report, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the claims from Reuveni “serious,” adding that they “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 also implored Senate Republicans not to turn a blind eye to the “dire consequences” of confirming Bove to a lifetime position on the federal bench.

Senate Democrats have long worried about the Trump administration’s Justice Department nominees and their willingness to disobey lawful court orders. Lawmakers have repeatedly grilled the agency’s appointees on whether they would advise the president to defy the courts.

And Bove himself has already attracted some controversy. As acting deputy attorney general in February, he penned a letter directing federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Seven different prosecutors resigned in protest of the Justice Department directive.

As of Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republican leadership has yet to formally schedule a committee hearing with Bove, but he is expected to testify before the panel on Wednesday.

Trump formally tapped the Justice Department official for the Third Circuit last month, writing in a post on his social media platform Truth Social that he would “never let you down” as a member of the federal bench. “Emil is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone,” the president said at the time.

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