New evidence supports claim that Emil Bove suggested defying court orders

WASHINGTON (CN) — Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats on Thursday published a trove of email and text messages from a Justice Department whistleblower who has accused top agency official Emil Bove of expressing intent to violate a federal court order.

The massive document drop comes just a week before Bove, now nominated by President Donald Trump to become a federal judge, is expected to face a key vote in the upper chamber’s panel tasked with considering White House judicial nominees.

And lawmakers say the published texts and emails corroborate whistleblower claims against Bove.

Erez Reuveni, a former Justice Department attorney fired in April, first came to the Judiciary Committee in June with accusations that Bove had used his position as principal associate deputy attorney general to advise the Homeland Security Department that it could deplane migrants the Trump administration had deported to El Salvador, in spite of a court order requiring deportation flights to turn around.

Justice Department lawyers, the whistleblower said, had knowingly lied to a judge about the status of deportation flights.

Reuveni also revealed that Bove had said in a meeting with top Justice Department officials that the agency might have to tell a federal court “fuck you” in order to carry out the president’s long-promised mass deportations.

The Justice Department has vehemently denied the accusations, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche calling them “falsehoods” from a disgruntled former employee with an axe to grind. But texts and emails from the whistleblower, published Thursday by Senate Democrats, appear to back up Reuveni’s claims.

In a March 15 text exchange between Reuveni and a colleague, the two Justice Department employees reference Bove’s “fuck you” comment. The conversation occurred during and after a hearing in the U.S. District Court for D.C. during which administration attorney Drew Ensign told U.S. District Judge James Boasberg that he did not know whether removal flights to El Salvador were imminent.

“Oh shit. That was just not true,” wrote Reuveni’s colleague, apparently referencing Ensign’s statements to the court. “I can’t believe he said he doesn’t know.”

The whistleblower’s colleague added that they believed Ensign knew that there were plans for removal flights under the Alien Enemies Act — the law used by the Trump administration to justify mass deportations — within “the next 24 hours.”

Reuveni noted that Ensign didn’t “know for sure” the deportees were being removed under the Alien Enemies Act but that he knew the removal flights were taking place.

“This doesn’t end with anything but a nationwide injunction, and a decision point on fuck you,” Reuveni later wrote. “Guess we are going to say fuck you to the court,” he added, an apparent reference to Bove’s comments about the possibility of ignoring such an order.

“Well Pamela Jo Bondi is,” his colleague replied, invoking the attorney general’s full name. “Not you.”

Disclosed emails to Reuveni from Yaakov Roth, acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, provide further evidence supporting the whistleblower’s claim that Bove had advised the Homeland Security Department that migrants deported to El Salvador could be deplaned.

Roth’s email appears to back up Reuveni’s previous contention that Bove told Homeland Security officials they could offload deportees because they had left U.S. airspace before the D.C. federal court had entered a written version of its restraining order into the case docket.

Reuveni, who until April was acting deputy director at the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation, was fired over his involvement in a separate 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 smuggling charges.

The attorney-turned-whistleblower on Thursday turned over a trove of communications related to the Abrego Garcia case, during which he was one of the first administration officials to inform a federal court that the Maryland man had been removed from the country by mistake.

In a post on X Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi slammed Reuveni’s new claims, calling him a “leaker” making false claims and “seeking five minutes of fame.” She questioned the timing of Democrats’ release ahead of Bove’s pending Senate committee vote.

“This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts,” Bondi wrote.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche agreed, writing in his own post that he stood by Bove and the Justice Department’s actions. He also appeared to assert that there had not been a court order for the agency to ignore, despite Boasberg’s restraining order demanding that deportation planes be turned around.

“We don’t defy court orders,” he said. “No one was every asked to defy a court order — because there was no court order to defy.”

Reuveni’s disclosures come just about a week before the Judiciary Committee is expected to vote to advance Bove’s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Bove, who before joining the Justice Department was one of Trump’s personal lawyers, has already attracted controversy for his move earlier this year directing federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Democrats in particular have accused Bove of abusing his position and have worried that his confirmation would put a Trump loyalist in a powerful lifetime position on the federal bench.

“These episodes can only lead to one conclusion: Emil Bove belongs nowhere near the federal bench,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, the top-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement Thursday. “This is about more than a random f-bomb. This is a declaration of defiance of our courts at the highest level of our government by a man who now seeks a lifetime appointment to one o the highest courts in our land.”

But during his June nomination hearing, Bove forcefully rejected Democrats’ concerns.

“I am not anybody’s henchman, and I am not an enforcer,” he told lawmakers. “I have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States more than once and I have honored that oath.”

In a statement Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley was equally dismissive of new whistleblower revelations, saying that Bove was “very clear” during his hearing that he had never instructed anyone not to follow a court order.

Grassley also took aim at Democrats, arguing that the new documents provided by Reuveni “don’t seem to support the political narrative” and slamming his colleagues for the timing of their release.

“Everything about the way this has been handled by the other side smacks of bad faith,” wrote the Iowa Republican. “If the Democrats were serious about this process, they wouldn’t have sent me these documents less than one hour before releasing them to the media. That to me shows they’re playing politics.”

It’s unlikely that Bove will face much of a roadblock from Senate Republicans when it comes to a committee vote. The panel’s only possible GOP holdout, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, has long indicated that he would support the nominee.

Still, Durbin on Thursday urged his Republican colleagues to take a second look at Bove’s nomination given these new details.

“This vote will be a litmus test for Senate Judiciary Republicans,” he said.

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