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By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Senate Democrats on Thursday released internal Justice Department text messages and emails to corroborate claims by a whistleblower who alleged that President Donald Trump’s judicial nominee Emil Bove suggested that department lawyers could defy court orders to carry out mass deportations.
Bove, the Justice Department’s Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General who was nominated to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, denied the allegations during his confirmation hearing last month, telling lawmakers: “I am not anybody’s henchman.”
Erez Reuveni, a former department attorney who was fired in April after he admitted in court that the government erred by deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, leveled the accusations against Bove in a detailed letter that was submitted to the DOJ’s inspector general and transmitted to members of Congress.
In that complaint, Reuveni described three separate incidents when Justice Department leaders defied court orders related to the deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally.
Reuveni alleged that Bove told colleagues in a March 14 meeting they could consider defying future court orders by telling the courts “fuck you” so that planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador could depart as scheduled.
The planes ultimately took off despite a court order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, prompting him to later find probable cause to hold the government in contempt. That ruling remains paused by a federal appeals court.
Bove, in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June, told lawmakers he had “no recollection” of making that comment during the meeting.
But text messages and emails released on Thursday by Senate Democrats, who had requested additional documentary evidence, show that Reuveni and his colleagues exchanged contemporaneous communications directly related to Bove’s statement.
They also appeared to show evidence that Justice Department officials openly defied court orders, sparking concern and alarm among department attorneys.
In one March 15 text exchange between Reuveni and his supervisor August Flentje, who attended the March 14 meeting with Bove, one of them wrote: “Guess it’s time to find out on the ‘fuck you.'”
“Yup. It was good working with you,” the other responded.
Due to redactions in the documents, Reuters could not determine who wrote every text.
In another text exchange, Reuveni and an unidentified colleague also made reference to Bove’s comments, and appeared to confirm that the Justice Department misled Boasberg about whether it was aware that deportations would be taking place in the next 24 hours.
“About to enter the find out phase,” one of them texted the other. The two then discussed how shocked they were that a senior Justice Department attorney lied to Boasberg about knowing whether flights were due to depart in the next 24 hours.
“He knows there are plans for (Alien Enemies Act) removals within the next 24 hours,” one of them wrote. “Yes he does,” the other replied.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not have any immediate comment in response to the release of the texts and emails.
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said that the texts and emails underscored his deep concerns about Bove’s nomination and proved that the DOJ “misled a federal court and disregarded a court order.”
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Chizu Nomiyama)
