DoJ whistleblower provides emails backing claim Emil Bove defied courts over deportations

Erez Reuveni, a former justice department attorney who was dismissed from his post, has provided text messages to the Senate judiciary committee supporting his whistleblower complaint involving Emil Bove, a top department official who is currently being considered for a seat on the federal bench.

Reuveni’s initial complaint, filed last month, included the explosive allegation that Bove had told justice department lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order” blocking efforts to remove immigrants to El Salvador.

The text messages Reuveni provided to the Senate judiciary committee include Reuveni and his boss, August Flentje, referencing Bove’s comments, according to Bloomberg Law.

“Guess we are about to say fuck you to the court” – “Super,” Reuveni texted a colleague, according to Bloomberg.

The colleague replied: “Well Pamela Jo Bondi is”, and “Not you.”

A former New York City-based federal prosecutor, Bove was hired by Donald Trump to defend him against the four state and federal indictments he faced before winning re-election last year. He then appointed Bove as acting justice department deputy attorney general in his first weeks back in the White House, during which time Bove fired prosecutors who brought charges against January 6 rioters and requested a list of FBI agents who worked on the cases.

During a hearing before the Senate judiciary committee last month, Bove denied that he had ever instructed justice department attorneys to defy a court order.

“I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” he said.

But the messages released by Reuveni suggest that DoJ lawyers were, at the very least, aware of the possibility they might have to ignore judicial orders.

One of the newly disclosed emails shows that Bove gave the OK to deplane flights on foreign soil that were carrying immigration detainees from the US, despite an order from US district judge James Boasberg to turn the planes around. According to the email, Bove gave the legal advice that it was OK to deplane the detainees because the planes had left US airspace before Boasberg’s written order had been filed on the court docket. Prior to issuing his written order, Boasberg had issued an oral order from the bench.

Text messages between Erez Reuveni and Emil Bove. Photograph: Obtained by The Guardian

“At this point why don’t we just submit an emoji of a middle finger as our filing,” Reuveni wrote in one text 19 March message. “A picayune middle finger.” “So stupid,” his boss wrote back. The messages provide an unusual and remarkable level of insight into how justice department lawyers knew they were defying court orders.

Chris Stein contributed reporting