A whistleblower Thursday released a trove of messages backing up his claim that a top Trump Justice Department official discussed plans to defy federal judges’ orders in a high-profile mass deportation case.
The texts and and emails released by fired prosecutor Erez Reuveni suggest Emil Bove, a principal associate deputy attorney general, pushed for the deportation of scores of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador in March and discussed defying a federal judge’s order not to do so.
One message refers to Bove’s supposedly crudely telling fellow prosecutors that they might have to brazenly defy the order of Circuit Court Judge James Boasberg not to hand over the deported immigrants to Salvadoran authorities.
“Guess we are going to say ‘f–k you’ to the court,” Reuveni wrote to a colleague in one message.
Prosecutors and other federal officials are legally bound to obey judges’ orders even if they disagree with them or believe they could be wrong. Openly defying them would amount to a constitutional crisis, critics say.
The Trump administration has dismissed Reuveni’s filing as the unfounded complaint of a disgruntled former employee.
Bove, a former personal lawyer for Trump, has been nominated for a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge.
He told a congressional panel last month that he never discussed defying court orders from Boasberg or any other judge and insisted he didn’t recall using the expletive at all.
Reuveni was a 15-year veteran career lawyer at...
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