Advising defiance: a senior DOJ official and the reported order to ignore the courts

Editor's note: a whistleblower disclosure and released messages document the advice to defy court orders, but no court or official finding establishes it.

Erez Reuveni, a career Justice Department immigration litigator, filed a formal whistleblower complaint in June 2025 alleging that in a March 14, 2025 meeting about the planned Alien Enemies Act deportations, Emil Bove said the government might need to tell a federal court 'fuck you' and to consider ignoring any order that blocked the removals. Reuveni had been fired in April after admitting in court that the administration had wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

In July 2025, Senate Judiciary Democrats released texts and emails that appeared to corroborate the account, including contemporaneous messages between Justice Department lawyers referencing Bove's remark and an email from the acting head of the Civil Division indicating Bove had advised the Department of Homeland Security that migrants who had left U.S. airspace before the court's written order could be deplaned in El Salvador. That tied Bove to the continued flights documented at DEF-08.

Bove denied the allegations, telling senators at his June confirmation hearing 'I am not anybody's henchman' and that he had never instructed anyone to defy a court order, and the Justice Department called the account falsehoods from a disgruntled former employee. Senate Republicans declined to slow the nomination, and Bove was confirmed to a lifetime seat on the Third Circuit, 50-49. His role in ending the Eric Adams prosecution is documented in the Corruption database at OVR-06.