Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee opened an investigation Tuesday into whether the Trump administration violated various court orders in carrying out deportation flights to foreign countries.
The probe was sparked by a whistleblower complaint from a fired career Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney, Erez Reuveni, who alleged that Emil Bove, principal deputy attorney general, said during a March 14 meeting that the department may need to be prepared to tell the courts “f— you” amid challenges to block flights under the Alien Enemies Act.
“This disclosure, which was lawfully transmitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee under the Whistleblower Protection Act, describes multiple instances where senior DOJ officials advocated for ignoring court orders, delayed compliance with court orders, presented baseless legal arguments, misrepresented facts or made false statements in court, and directed Mr. Reuveni to misrepresent facts in court,” the committee wrote.
Bove’s comments allegedly came amid plans to send migrants to a megaprison in El Salvador. The whistleblower complaint accuses Bove of saying the Department of Homeland Security should be prepared to carry out flights even if a court intervened and blocked them.
Bove’s hunch that courts could swiftly intervene to block use of the law was correct — U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg on the night of March 15 ordered the flights grounded or turned around. Nonetheless, some 200 Venezuelan and Salvadoran men were brought on those flights to a notorious Salvadoran megaprison.
In subsequent hearings, Justice Department staff refused to reveal many particulars about the flights, and Boasberg later determined there was probable cause for criminal contempt as figures across the Trump administration appeared to willfully defy his orders.
Reuveni’s complaint alleges that his efforts to inform other agencies about limits on the flights went unanswered, and while on a telephonic court hearing he also heard fellow DOJ attorney Drew Ensign claim to not have information about the pending flights despite his presence in a meeting where Bove relayed they should take off no matter what.
“Mr. Bove also advised the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to violate a court order enjoining removals because it was given orally and not yet in writing. DOJ leadership provided instructions to agency clients to facilitate removals to El Salvador in violation of the existing injunction, and ‘report[ed] “down the chain” 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,’” the panel wrote.
Bove, who has been nominated by President Trump for a judgeship on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, said during a hearing last week that he did not recall using an expletive but dodged questions on whether he urged colleagues to defy the court.
“I’ve certainly said things encouraging litigators at the department to fight hard for valid positions that we have to take,” Bove said.
“I certainly conveyed the importance of the upcoming operation,” he added later.
The letter is addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi as well as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose agencies were also involved in the flights.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed receipt of the letter by the Justice Department. DHS and the Department of Defense did not respond to request for comment.
The letter asks for “all communications, memoranda, and other records, such as calendar entries and text messages” about the March 14 meeting as well as subsequent conversations about how to respond to Boasberg.
The probe is not just limited to the initial Alien Enemies Act flights. The letter also asks about another case before U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy, who in March also barred fast-track deportations.
However, migrants who were a party in the case later pleaded with Murphy to halt potential flights, saying any effort to remove them “would clearly violate” his previous order barring deportation of a group detained in Massachusetts.
DHS, however, later conducted some removal flights, taking eight men to South Sudan, a country in the midst of a civil war. The department defended the decision, arguing it did not violate Murphy’s order because it retained custody of the men.
The letter also asks for information about the handling of the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
It was Reuveni who first told U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis that Abrego Garcia was removed from the U.S. due to an “administrative error” in spite of a 2019 court ruling barring him from being deported to his native El Salvador.
Xinis ordered Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S., but the Trump administration challenged the ruling, a battle that led to intervention by the Supreme Court ordering the government to “facilitate” his return. Months later, the administration brought Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. as it announced he would face human smuggling charges related to a 2022 traffic stop.
The letter asks for all communications about the Abrego Garcia case as well as the decision to fire Reuveni.
Democrats also ask for interviews with a number of top DOJ officials, including Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Bove and Ensign, as well as Henry Whitaker, a former Florida solicitor general now serving as counselor to Bondi, and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Yaakov Roth. They also ask to speak with August Flentje, the deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation and a colleague of Reuveni, as well as acting general counsels at DHS and the Defense Department whom Reuveni was coordinating with about the flights.
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