U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday pushed back on the former Department of Justice "whistleblower" who is accusing the Trump administration of defying courts, saying Erez Reuveni is nothing more than a "disgruntled employee" and a "leaker."
Reuveni told The New York Times in a story published Thursday that the Trump administration was "thumbing its nose at the courts" over the due process rights of hundreds of illegal migrants, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom Reuveni asserted to a federal judge was mistakenly deported to El Salvador earlier this year.
Reuveni's claims center on Emil Bove, nominated by President Donald Trump in May to be a federal judge for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Reuveni claims that Bove, the Justice Department's principal associate deputy attorney general, repeatedly suggested defying the courts in order to uphold Trump's immigration policies.
"If they can do this sort of thing to Abrego Garcia, to 238 people that nobody knows, and send them to CECOT forever with no due process, they can do that to anyone," Reuveni told the Times. "It should be deeply, deeply worrisome … that the government can, without showing evidence to anyone of anything, spirit you away on a plane to wherever, forever."
Bondi dismissed the accusations and said the timing of the Times' story was not a coincidence; Bove's confirmation hearing is set for Friday.
"We support legitimate whistleblowers, but this disgruntled employee is not a whistleblower — he's a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote," Bondi said in a post to X.
"As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge [James] Boasberg's lawless order. And no one was ever asked to defy a court order," her post went on.
Attorneys for Reuveni on Thursday released a series of emails they say back his claims that Bove pushed for rushed deportations and encouraged the DOJ to say "[expletive] you" to court orders, ABC News reported.
Senate Democrats also released internal DOJ text messages and emails they say corroborate Reuveni's claims that Bove suggested that department lawyers could defy court orders.
Bondi rebutted those claims.
"This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts. This 'whistleblower' signed 3 briefs defending DOJ's position in this matter, and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department," her post concluded.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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