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New text messages and documents have bolstered a whistleblower complaint accusing Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove of instructing members of the Justice Department to ignore court orders that could have interfered with plans to transfer several planes of undocumented migrants to prisons in El Salvador.
Bove is currently a nominee to become a federal circuit court judge.
Emails and text messages sent to Congress by former DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni — who in June filed a complaint against Bove — shed new details on allegations that Bove had floated giving U.S. courts a big “fuck you” during a Justice Department meeting discussing the then-planned deportations.
In text messages with Justice Department Deputy Director August Flentje — written the day that the deportations took place — Reuveni wrote that it was “time to find out about the ‘fuck you.’”
Flentje jokingly replied that it had been “good working with” him and that they were “likely saved for today by the fact that [Judge James] Boasberg is on vacation.”
In another text exchange, made four days after the government was accused of deporting the migrants in violation of a court order, Reuveni wrote that “at this point why don’t we just submit an emoji of a middle finger as our filing” to the court. “So stupid,” replied Flentje.
In a statement accompanying the release of the messages, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote that the evidence provided by Reuveni “show that the Department of Justice misled a federal court and disregarded a court order. Mr. Bove spearheaded this effort, which demanded attorneys violate their ethical duty of candor to the court. And if Mr. Bove simply ‘can’t recall’ any of this and demands his subordinates compromise their professional obligations, he doesn’t have the moral judgment or character to serve in a lifetime position on the federal court.”
“These episodes can only lead to one conclusion: Emil Bove belongs nowhere near the federal bench,” Durbin wrote.
According to a whistleblower complaint filed by Reuveni and obtained by The New York Times last month Bove stated during a March meeting the DOJ might just need to tell the courts to fuck off if they attempted to interfere with plans to transfer migrants to a foreign prison in El Salvador known for its human rights abuses.
Reuveni represented the DOJ in three cases related to the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigration, and was fired after admitting in court — where he is required to tell the truth under questioning from a judge — that in April the administration illegally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man residing in Maryland who had a protective court order barring his removal to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia, along with hundreds of others, was sent to CECOT, a notorious maximum-security prison and propaganda production center built by El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayinb Bukele, a strauch Trump supporter.
Abrego Garcia’s case was central to the widespread legal efforts to reverse the imprisonment and indefinite detention of those sent to El Salvador without due process. It was also the focal point of the Trump administration’s efforts to stonewall the judiciary.
According to Reuveni’s complaint, “plans of DOJ leadership to resist court orders that would impede potentially illegal efforts to deport noncitizens” were formed weeks before the deportations took place. Reiveni also alleges the DOJ lied about its deportation agenda.
On March 15 — during a hearing over a restraining order against the deportations — Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign was asked by D.C. District Judge James Boasberg if he knew of plans to conduct removals under the Alien Enemies act “in the next 24 or 48 hours.”
Ensign told the court that he didn’t “know the answer to that question,” and requested some time to contact members of the administration to find out. The invocation of the Alien Enemies Act had been signed hours before, and during the 40-minute break granted to him by Boasberg the first two planes of migrants departed towards El Salvador.
But according to Reuveni’s complaint, Ensign was present at a meeting that took place the day before in which Bove informed high-ranking DOJ officials that “the AEA proclamation wouldsoon be signed and that one or more planes containing individuals subject to the AEA would be taking off over the weekend — meaning Saturday, March 15 and Sunday, March 16.”
According to the complaint, Reuveni “reasonably believes Ensign’s statement to the court that he did not know whether AEA removals would take place ‘in the next 24 or 48 hours’ was false. Ensign had been present in the previous day’s meeting when Emil Bove stated clearly that one or more planes containing individuals subject to the AEA would be taking off over the weekend no matter what.”
The text messages provided by Reuveni bolster this assertion. In an exchange written during and after the March 15 hearing, Reuveni’s colleague wrote “oh shit, that’s just not true,” in response to Ensign’s assertion that he didn’t know the timeframe of the deportations.
“About to enter the find out phase Following fuck around,” Reuveni replied. “He got my email, he knows they’re being removed.”
The complaint suggests that Ensign’s actions in court may have been part of an open effort by the DOJ to obstruct the courts, alleging that during the same March 14 meeting, Bove discussed the possibility that “a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated,” and suggested that the “DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order.“
When it became clear that the planes had taken off, Boasberg issued a written order demanding that any further flights be canceled, and that the planes already in the air be turned around. Reuveni — monitoring the hearing through a public line — texted his supervisor, Deputy Director August Flentje, a reference to Bove’s “fuck you” comment, to which Flentje “acknowledged Bove’s comment with a joke referencing the possibility that either he or Mr. Reuveni could be fired, impliedly for reporting up their chain of command concerns that a court order had been violated.”
The resulting court battle over the removals and allegations of legal misconduct by the administration saw the president and his allies repeatedly flout court orders — including an order from the Supreme Court to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia. Reuveni’s complaint alleges that he was told by both Flentje and Ensign that “the government was not going to answer the court’s questions about anything that happened before 7:26 p.m. on March 15, and so not to provide information about when the flights took off.”
In April, when Reuveni was assigned to represent the government in Abrego Garcia’s case he — as stated in his complaint — “candidly and truthfully informed the court, based on the evidentiary record, that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal from the United States was a mistake. Later that evening, Mr. Reuveni refused directions from his superiors to file a brief misrepresenting those facts to the court.”
Reuveni was put on administrative leave the next day, and fired within a week.
Meanwhile, as the Trump administration attempted to get Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit dismissed this week, Justice Department lawyer Bridget O’Hickey reverted to the claim that his deportation to El Salvador was a mistake. “We have acknowledged this was an administrative error,” she said Monday.
Bove continues to advance through the Senate confirmation process, but the debacle surrounding the deportations and Abrego Garcia has cast a pall over his prospects.
Durbin told the Times that the complaint against Bove not only speaks to his “failure to fulfill his ethical obligations as a lawyer, but demonstrate[s] 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.”
Why would Republicans install a judge who has demonstrated a willingness to tell the courts to “fuck off” in favor of a president’s political goals, if not to help that president neuter the judiciary from within?
This story was originally published on June 24, 2025.
