By Allan Lengel
Department of Justice attorney Erez Reuveni tells 60 Minutes that at the start of President Trump’s second term, he was promoted to acting deputy director of the immigration section, overseeing about 100 attorneys. He says his career came to an end after he witnessed lawyers lying in court, evading a judge’s orders, and refusing to go along with it all.
The administration has called the whistleblower, who began working at the DOJ in 2010, a leaker seeking five minutes of fame.
He says that on the very day of his promotion in March, he and others attended a meeting headed by Emil Bove III, the newly appointed number three official at the DOJ, who is now a federal court of appeals judge.
“And we were told at this meeting that over the weekend, the president of the United States would be signing a proclamation invoking something called the Alien Enemies Act. This is a wartime law from 1798 invoked three times in the nation’s history — during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II.”
The Alien Enemies Act, according to 60 minutes, allows the rapid expulsion from the U.S. of citizens of enemy nations during a war. But in this case, without war, Trump invoked the law to deport more than 100 Venezuelans to tEl Salvafor without being heard by a judge.
Reuveni recounted: “Bove emphasized, ‘Those planes need to take off, no matter what.’ And then, after a pause, he told everyone in attendance, ‘And if some court should issue an order preventing that, we may have to consider telling that court, “fuck you.”’
“I felt like a bomb had gone off. Here was the number three official using expletives to tell career attorneys that we might have to consider disregarding federal court orders.”
According to 60 Minutes, the next day — Saturday — lawyers for the prisoners sued. Judge James Boasberg called a hearing and asked government lawyer Drew Ensign whether the planes were leaving that weekend.
“Ensign says to Boasberg, ‘I don’t know.’ Now, Ensign was at the same meeting that I was at the day before, where we were told in no uncertain terms that planes were taking off over the weekend — that those planes needed to take off no matter what. And he says, ‘I don’t know.’”
It was during that hearing, 60 Minutes reports, that the planes took off. More than five hours after Boasberg’s order, the detainees and other prisoners arrived at a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
“And then it really hit me. It’s like, we really did tell the court, ‘Screw you.’ We really did just tell the courts, ‘We don’t care about your order. You can’t tell us what to do.’ That was a real gut punch.”
It turned out that Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia had been deported by mistake. Reuveni tells 60 Minutes that a superior instructed him to argue against Abrego Garcia’s return, claiming he was an MS-13 gang member and terrorist.
“I respond up the chain of command, ‘No way,’” he said. “That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief.”
“Here’s the really important thing: whether Mr. Abrego Garcia is or isn’t a member of MS-13 or a terrorist or anything else is beside the point. What matters is that everything they did to him violated his due process rights. What’s to stop them, if they decide they don’t like you anymore, from saying you’re a criminal, a member of MS-13, or a terrorist? What’s to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney, at the direction of leadership, to delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie? And then that’s you — gone, and your liberties changed.”
He says he was fired after refusing to sign a brief calling Abrego Garcia a terrorist.
