Emil Bove, a Justice Department official and judicial nominee, told government lawyers to ignore court orders against the Trump administration’s move to deport immigrants to a Salvadoran prison under a wartime statute, according to a former department lawyer.
When considering the possibility that a federal court could block the removals, Bove said at a meeting that the government “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order,” Erez Reuveni, a veteran litigator for the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation, alleged in a Tuesday whistleblower complaint, obtained by Bloomberg Law.
The allegations, first reported Tuesday by the New York Times, were made public one day before Bove is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to a seat on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, a lifetime appointment.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on the social media platform X that the claims against Justice Department leaders “are utterly false.”
“I was at the meeting described in the article and at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed. This is disgusting journalism,” Blanche said.
Reuveni, who spent about 15 years as a career lawyer at the department, was handling various legal challenges related to the administration’s decision to invoke the...
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