A senior Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, told subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders in order to fulfill the president’s aggressive deportation campaign, according to a whistle-blower complaint by a department lawyer who has since been fired.

The account by the dismissed lawyer, Erez Reuveni, paints a disturbing portrait of his final three weeks on the front lines of the Trump administration’s legal efforts to ship immigrants overseas, often with little notice or recourse. In Mr. Reuveni’s telling, Mr. Bove used an expletive as he discussed disregarding court orders, and other top law enforcement officials showed themselves ready to stonewall judges or lie to them to get their way.

Mr. Reuveni’s account, which was reviewed by The New York Times, was filed to lawmakers and the Justice Department inspector general on Tuesday, just one day before Mr. Bove is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a nomination to a federal appeals court. Mr. Reuveni was a career lawyer at the Justice Department for nearly 15 years until April, when he appeared in a federal court in Maryland and expressed concern that the administration had mistakenly deported a migrant to a megaprison in El Salvador. Mr. Reuveni was put on administrative leave a day later and ultimately fired.

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Justice Department official suggested the Trump administration might have to ignore court orders as it prepared to deport Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members, a fired department lawyer alleged in a whistleblower complaint made public Tuesday.

The filing seeks an investigation into the claims about Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who is set to face lawmakers Wednesday for his confirmation hearing to become a federal appeals court judge.

The former DOJ lawyer, Erez Reuveni, was fired after he conceded in a court hearing that Kilmar Abrego Garcia should not have been deported to El Salvador, and expressed frustration over a lack of information about the administration’s actions.

The whistleblower filing from Reuveni’s lawyers describes a Justice Department meeting in March after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act over what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The filing alleges that Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could be carried out. Reuveni claims Bove used a profanity, saying the department would need to consider telling the courts “f— you,” and “ignore any such order,” according to the filing.

“Mr. Reuveni was stunned by Bove’s statement because, to Mr. Reuveni’s knowledge, no one in DOJ leadership – in any Administration – had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with” an expletive, the filing says.

Reuveni’s claims were first reported Tuesday by The New York Times.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche denied the allegations in a post on X Tuesday morning. Blanche said Reuveni’s claims are “utterly false,” adding that he was at the meeting and “at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.”

“Planting a false hit piece the day before a confirmation hearing is something we have come to expect from the media, but it does not mean it should be tolerated,” Blanche wrote.

Reuveni was fired shortly after he had been promoted to serve as acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation. He had worked for the Justice Department for nearly 15 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Fired Justice Department lawyer accuses agency of planning to defy court orders

toggle caption Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

A longtime government lawyer told Congress that Justice Department leaders planned to knowingly defy court orders and withhold information from judges to advance the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation goals, according to a newly published whistleblower complaint.

The lawyer, Erez Reuveni, previously won awards and commendations over nearly 15 years at the Justice Department, including from Republican appointees in the first Trump administration. But he was put on leave and then fired in April after he told a federal judge an immigrant had been deported in error.

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Reuveni ultimately decided to blow the whistle to lawmakers and watchdogs at the Justice Department and the Office of Special Counsel, detailing what he called defiance and noncompliance in three separate immigration cases this year. His accusations add to broader concern about the Trump administration’s repeated clashes with the judiciary over immigration and other policies.

“Discouraging clients from engaging in illegal conduct is an important part of the role of a lawyer,” his attorneys wrote in the complaint. “Mr. Reuveni tried to do so and was thwarted, threatened, fired, and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court.”

News of the complaint, first reported by The New York Times, comes a day before senior Justice Department official Emil Bove is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Bove is President Trump’s nominee to serve as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, a post that carries a lifetime appointment.

Bove also is a former personal lawyer to Trump. He worked alongside now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to defend Trump in four separate criminal cases. Blanche issued a statement calling Reuveni’s claims “utterly false.”

In the new filing, Reuveni disclosed a meeting inside the Justice Department on March 14, shortly before Trump formally declared he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members and fly them to El Salvador.

At that meeting, the whistleblower complaint said, Bove “stressed to all in attendance that the planes need to take off no matter what.” Bove then said that the group may need to consider telling judges “f*** you” and ignore possible court orders blocking immigrants from being removed from the U.S., according to the document.

That account calls into question several representations others inside the Justice Department have made to U.S. District Judge James Boasberg about when planes carrying migrants took off and passed through U.S. airspace before they landed in El Salvador.

The deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said, “I was at the meeting described in the article and at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.”

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., thanked Reuveni for speaking up. Durbin, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the new allegations add to a “troubling” list of actions by Bove, who also pushed to fire prosecutors who worked on Capitol riot cases and to back away from the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

“These serious allegations, from a career Justice Department lawyer who defended the first Trump Administration’s immigration policies, 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 said.

Durbin added that confirming Bove to a lifetime-tenured judicial seat could have “dire consequences.”

Reuveni’s complaint could reverberate far beyond Capitol Hill, since courts across the nation continue to consider the legality of Trump’s speedy deportations.

Reuveni’s attorneys, Dana Gold and Andrea Meza at the Government Accountability Project and Kevin Owen at Gilbert Employment Law, said the Justice Department actions “have grave impacts not only for the safety of individuals removed from the country in violation of court orders, but also for the constitutional rights and protections of all persons — citizen and noncitizen alike — who are potential victims of flagrant, deliberate disregard of due process and the rule of law by the agency charged with upholding it.”