NEW: Erez Reuveni, the DOJ lawyer fired for his honesty in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, tells Congress that Emil Bove suggested the DOJ respond to any court orders blocking the CECOT deportations with "fuck you."
He also says DOJ lawyer Drew Ensign lied to Judge Boasberg.
Reuveni accuses Drew Ensign, the DOJ lawyer appearing for the Trump admin in the Alien Enemies Act case, of lying to Judge Boasberg on March 15 when he said he didn't know planes were taking off.
He says Ensign was at a meeting the day before when the flight were planned!
Reuveni says that on March 15 he was emailing DHS updates telling them that Judge Boasberg was ordering DHS to halt the flights.
His supervisor, August Flentje, noted Bove's "fuck you" line and joked Reuveni might be fired for telling DHS not to violate the order.
Reuveni notes that he repeatedly told DHS throughout the night of March 15 that they had to follow court orders. Even Drew Ensign agreed Judge Boasberg's order required them to turn the planes around.
Emil Bove intervened and ordered DHS to ignore that interpretation.
Reuveni's whistelblower account also says that senior DOJ leadership directly ordered DHS not to comply with Judge Boasberg's order to report as to what happened with the flights.
Relevant to yesterday, Reuveni also accuses senior DOJ leadership of defying the D.V.D. court order, with the DOJ refusing to distribute nationwide guidance on its impact despite the order quite clearly applying nationwide.
Yesterday SCOTUS blessed other defiance in that case.
Reuveni says he was ordered to file a brief at the 1st Circuit seeking an emergency stay of the D.V.D. injunction.
The brief argued that the order was nationwide, yet Reuveni knew that inside DHS the Trump admin was saying it only applied to the named plaintiffs — so he refused.
After Reuveni again raised serious concerns that DHS was treating the D.V.D. injunction as if it hadn't happened and didn't apply nationwide (despite telling a court it agreed), Drew Ensign personally told him to stop sending emails raising concerns about noncompliance.
On March 31, when the Trump admin deported more people to El Salvador using military flights, Reuveni knew that those flights violated the D.V.D. court order.
He says the DOD's General Counsel didn't know about the court order and was "upset" that DHS hadn't told him about it.
Reuveni, again investigating what appeared to be a clear violation of a court order, reached out to the DOD and the State Department.
The DOD's General Counsel says Joseph Mazzara had organized the flights — but Mazzara told Reuveni he didn't know anything about them.
After Reuveni raised his serious concerns about the admin having violated a court order, Yaakov Roth, a senior DOJ attorney put there by Trump, ordered him to stop asking questions and stop writing things in email.
The implication was that the admin wanted to hide from FOIA.
Turning to the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, which got Reuveni fired, he says that he repeatedly raised serious concerns about the facts and the law — and that DOJ leadership again ordered him to stop asking questions and stop trying to uncover the truth of the matter.
Finally, Mr. Reuveni says that he was ultimately fired because he refused to sign a legal brief making an argument that was directly contrary to law and unsupported by any evidence put forward in the case — that Abrego Garcia's deportation was legal because he was a "terrorist."
Mr. Reuveni's whistleblower letter is a shocking documentation of the Trump administration's contempt for the rule of law and for the federal judiciary.
Unfortunately, yesterday the Supreme Court arguably blessed this defiant attitude from the admin. static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/d…
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