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LaMonica McIver Prepares to Hoist Todd Blanche with His Own Petard

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For months, I’ve been anticipating the possibility that Trump’s politicized prosecutions will backfire, both by empowering the political martyrs they create and by exposing their own corruption.

I’m interested in this for two reasons: first, the possibility that these prosecutions will backfire, not just by creating sympathetic political martyrs, but also by further exposing Bondi and her top aides as liars violating legal ethics.

A package of filings from Congresswoman LaMonica McIver submitted last night suggests that may soon happen.

She has filed four motions:

Two crucial details lie behind all of them.

First, according to Body Cam footage provided in discovery (and available to Judge Jamel Semper), after Newark Mayor Ras Baraka left the Delaney Hall facility in response to Ricky Patel’s order to do so, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States instructed Patel (listed as V-1 in all the filings) to arrest the Mayor.

Allegation: After the Mayor complied with HSI’s instructions to “leave the secured area,” agents placed him under arrest “in the unsecured area.” Indictment at 2-3.

Evidence: After a phone call, [Ricky Patel] announced a decision to arrest Mayor Baraka: “I am arresting the mayor . . . even though he stepped out, I am going to put him in cuffs . . . per the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.” Ex. B at 1:16:27-1:17:35. Meanwhile, the Members— who were still being prevented from entering the facility—returned to the entrance gate where they learned that the agents were changing course and renewing their plan to arrest the Mayor on baseless charges. Ex. A at 1:26:40-1:26:50; Ex. H, JR Axon Body Camera Arrest.mp4, at 00:30-00:40.

And, according to DOJ’s discovery response to McIver’s initial discovery request, Todd Blanche is signing off on correspondence in this case (possibly because Alina Habba is not a proper US Attorney).

Congressional immunity

Start with the immunity filing. After laying out her election last year (which she notes was a landslide, so let’s hope Trump sees this), McIver describes how starting on her third day in office, she prioritized oversight of immigration matters, with a town hall, a visit to a different detention facility, a letter to Kristi Noem, and a meeting with ICE. She then describes how the video produced in discovery captured her (and Rob Menendez — whose father’s earlier prosecution is the standard for Speech and Debate immunity in the Third Circuit — and Bonnie Watson Coleman) repeatedly describing their visit as congressional oversight.

Body Cam video captured them identifying theirs as a congressional oversight visit when they entered the facility. (This declaration describes the source of each video.)

Allegation: Count One alleges that on May 9, 2025, Congresswoman McIver and her congressional delegation “arrived at Delaney Hall allegedly to conduct a congressional oversight inspection.” Indictment at 1.

Evidence: Representatives McIver, Watson Coleman, and Menendez identified themselves as Members of Congress, explained they were there to conduct congressionally authorized oversight, and asserted their “right to look at the facility” and inspect its “safety, health, [and] services.” See Ex. B, CD Axon Body Camera Pre and Arrest.mp4, at 1:34-2:08.

Other video captured them questioning GEO employees as part of that oversight, while they were made to wait for an hour.

Allegation: The congressional delegation “entered the secured area and proceeded to an interior reception area.” Indictment at 2.

Evidence: The Members were told to remain in that small space for about an hour, during which they were denied access to the facility despite their repeated assertions of statutory authority. Nevertheless, the Members spent that hour pursuing their oversight mission, in part by questioning employees about the facility and its operations. During this time, unbeknownst to the Members, ICE was mobilizing its forces: high-level officials of ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) reported to the facility; munitions-filled vehicles took formation in its secured parking lot, and approximately 15 armed agents assembled just inside the gates. Ex. B at 6:40-13:30, 16:30-17:23, 20:09-35:14; Ex. A, NEPTZ.avi, at 23:00-23:15, 29:40-29:50, 40:50-41:05; Ex C, Axon_Body_4_Video_2025-05- 09_1418_D01AA954X.mp4, at 00:30-00:44; Ex D, Axon_Body_4_Video_2025-05- 09_1418_D01AA942W.mp4, at 00:37

More video captured McIver citing the law permitting members of Congress to conduct such oversight as ICE started its attack on Baraka.

Allegation: The “Congressional Delegation overheard this conversation and [] protest[ed].” Indictment at 3.

Evidence: Arriving by the Mayor’s side, Congresswomen McIver and Watson Coleman reprimanded the agents for “creating a problem” that did not exist. Congresswoman McIver reiterated that the agents had kept them waiting for “over an hour,” in blatant violation of federal law, and repeated, “We are here to do our oversight visit.” Congressman Menendez summed up the absurdity of the situation the agents had created: “You have an unarmed Mayor of the largest city in the state, and you have two dozen people out here and cars barricading us? This is an act of intimidation and you know it.” Ex. F at 4:32-5:58.

More video describes Patel — one of the purported victims — conceding the legality of the presence of the Members of Congress.

Allegation: An HSI agent, identified in the indictment as “V-1,” explained that “members of Congress had lawful authority to be in the secured area of Delaney Hall, but that” the Mayor “did not.” Indictment at 3.

Evidence: Although the indictment otherwise ignores the oversight context, V-1 verified the Members’ lawful authority, explaining, “congressmen are different, congresswomen are different.” Ex. F at 7:04-7:12.

Video captured the members identifying themselves as such when the melee ensued.

Allegation: As agents moved in to arrest the Mayor, Congresswoman McIver “hurried outside towards the agents” as someone “yelled ‘circle the mayor.’” Indictment at 3. Congresswoman McIver then “placed her arms around” the Mayor. Id.

Evidence: ICE agents, heavily armed and most of them masked, rushed out of the gate to arrest the Mayor where he was on public property surrounded by reporters, his staff, and members of the public. The Members walked through the gate at approximately the same time. Ex. A at 1:26:50-1:26:56. As a crush of over a dozen agents descended on the Mayor, a man called out to “circle the Mayor,” and the Members coalesced around him, holding one another’s arms to remain upright in the crowd. Ex. A at 1:26:50-1:27:08; Ex. I, AG Axon Body Camera Arrest.mp4, at 00:47-00:55. Agents and protestors alike pushed toward the Members, destabilizing the group. The Members repeatedly asserted their federal status and instructed the agents not to touch them. Ex. I at 1:00-1:20. Agents nevertheless pressed in on the Members as the crowd formed more tightly around them.

McIver has mapped this all onto the indictment to prove that to defend the case, McIver would have to submit her actions as a Member of Congress to the jury for scrutiny.

McIver then goes on to argue that she is therefore immune under both Speech and Debate and — citing Trump v. US — separation of powers.

The separation of powers accordingly confers an immunity on the official acts of legislators symmetrical with the immunity for the President’s official acts. The Speech or Debate Clause confers immunity on legislative acts, which represent legislators’ “core constitutional powers,” and are thus absolutely immune. Trump, 603 U.S. at 606. The separation of powers extends further, making clear that legislative immunity also covers official acts, which represent “the outer perimeter of [the legislator’s] official responsibility.” Id. at 596. But that broader scope comes with a caveat: these acts are only presumptively immune. Id. at 614. Immunity for this wider class of official conduct may be rebutted when “the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the” Legislative Branch. See Trump, 603 U.S. at 615 (cleaned up).17 The prosecution cannot do so here.

Motion to Compel

Virtually all of that narrative comes from Body Cam video provided in discovery. There’s one important exception: where an ICE agent shoved McIver so hard that she immediately said she was going to file a complaint.

Allegation: Count Two alleges that “[f]ollowing the arrest of” the Mayor, Congresswoman McIver “pushed past” another agent “using each of her forearms to forcibly strike” the agent “as she returned inside of the secured area of Delaney Hall.” Indictment at 5.

Evidence: After a few short moments, the Mayor made his way to V-1 to submit to arrest, and was promptly dragged back into the secured area and handcuffed. Congresswoman McIver followed, and an agent forcefully shoved her backward before she could reenter the secured area. NJ Spotlight News (@NJSpotlightNews), X (May 9, 2025 15:29 ET), https://x.com/NJSpotlightNews/status/1920926649777852742. Indeed, the agent’s use of force against Congresswoman McIver as she was reentering the facility was so egregious that—unlike the officers responding to the Congresswoman’s actions—she immediately informed an ICE official that she intended to file a complaint. Ex. I at 3:30-3:43. Congressman Menendez reentered with Congresswoman McIver, and Congresswoman Watson Coleman was escorted back through the gates with the help of agents. After the turmoil subsided, the Members were permitted to enter the building and complete their inspection.

That is one of the reasons she filed a motion to compel. She didn’t get Body Cam footage from at least two key ICE officers: the second guy she allegedly assaulted, and the guy who shoved her.

Second, there were as many as 15 uniformed law enforcement officers or agents with BWCs on site; several, however, apparently made no recordings. The lack of videos from those who were wearing BWCs appears to be inconsistent with applicable ICE policy and instructions at the scene from a supervisory agent. Indeed, at least two critical individuals have no BWC footage: the law enforcement agent identified in the Indictment as V-2, who is the alleged victim in Count 2; and another agent who appeared to violently shove Congresswoman McIver in the chest as she attempted to return inside the Delaney Hall gate. A government agent’s deliberate failure to activate a BWC contrary to policy and instructions clearly is relevant to the preparation of the defense. In addition, there were other agents who had no BWC at all.

In the guise of proving the full context of her visit that day, McIver has also asked for other video from the facility (which might provide more proof of the calls to people like Todd Blanche or might explain why a bunch of ICE vehicles arrived while the members of Congress were waiting).

To that end, the defense’s discovery letter requested that the government provide “all interior and exterior surveillance footage of any events on May 9, beginning at least 10 minutes before Congresswoman McIver’s arrival at Delaney Hall through at least 4:00 p.m., which is after she departed the facility’s secured perimeter.” Ex. K, Req. I.A. The government’s response was inconsistent. On one hand, the government indicated that it would attempt to locate and produce “footage of the Representatives’ tour of the Delaney Hall facility after the arrest of Mayor Baraka had taken place,” though it disclaimed the relevance of such footage. On the other hand, the government claimed that it received these two surveillance videos from GEO Group (the private company that ICE has retained to operate Delaney Hall). However, the government claims that other GEO Group materials are not in the government’s possession and suggests that the government has no other surveillance videos from stationary or fixed cameras. The government did not otherwise respond to Congresswoman McIver’s request for more complete surveillance videos, apparently taking the position that this material is not relevant. Ex. M at 1 (“To the extent this letter does not provide the requested materials, it is the position of the Government that those materials do not fall within the ambit of Rule 16”).

She’s also seeking the communications of everyone present pertaining to whether they were assaulted or not.

Although Congresswoman McIver may seek further relief from the Court to require production of those communications as this case progresses, the Court should at least order the government to disclose now:

VII.A. All contemporaneous text, voice, instant, chat or email messages – sent via either Telegram, Signal, or any other communications method, application, or medium – to, from, between, or among anyone present at Delaney Hall on May 9, 2025 and anyone else affiliated or associated with the GEO Group, DOJ, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, ICE, HSI, or DHS describing, reflecting, or implying that any government employee present on May 9 at Delaney Hall did not experience or report harm, injury, danger, or fear as a result of Congresswoman McIver’s actions.

VII.B. All written, verbal, or other reports or statements – whether or not memorialized – by any government official, individual affiliated with GEO, member of the public, or anyone else that is inconsistent with the charge that Congresswoman McIver knowingly, intentionally, or forcibly assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, or interfered with federal officials on May 9.

These requests concern statements that show a lack of harm, injury, or fear by the alleged victims of the Congresswoman’s charged conduct.

Again, there’s a very sound reason to demand these communications based on the charges. But the video and the communications might also explain the involvement of Todd Blanche, Alina Habba, and Kristi Noem.

Selective Prosecution

Which brings us to the selective prosecution filing. As I said a million times when covering Hunter Biden’s selective prosecution bid (which I think might have survived if he had had money to appeal), these are almost impossible to win because you have to prove that someone similarly situated was not charged.

But McIver does that one better. She compares how DOJ dismissed all the January 6 assaults, even while charging her.

Just months ago, the Department of Justice dismissed cases against hundreds of defendants involved in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Among these dismissals were over 160 prosecutions charging the defendants with violations of 18 U.S.C. § 111 stemming from their assault of federal law enforcement officials who were protecting the Capitol and the Members of Congress and their staff. Video footage showed these defendants throwing explosives, beating federal officers with baseball bats and riot shields, and spraying them with pepper spray, all in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The Justice Department not only walked away from those charges, but it has since fired career prosecutors, agents, and support staff for their mere participation in the investigations and prosecutions. This case charges Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, a sitting Democratic Member of Congress, with violating the same federal assault statute. But the similarity ends there. As the government concedes in the indictment, Congresswoman McIver was exercising her statutory and constitutional oversight responsibilities when she visited Delaney Hall—a privately run immigration detention facility that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently reopened in her District. Unlike the January 6 rioters, Congresswoman McIver had every right to be on those premises. Indeed, she was there to do her job.

There is also a palpable difference between the actions of those at the Capitol on January 6 and Congresswoman McIver’s conduct. Footage that the government has provided in discovery shows that federal officials made a series of manipulative, irresponsible, and dangerous decisions that placed dozens of bystanders, as well as three Members of Congress, at risk of physical harm. In fact, the video recorded almost two dozen armed agents and officers of ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) surging into a crowd in a public space to arrest the Mayor of Newark for supposedly trespassing on federal land. The government, of course, has since dismissed that ill-conceived and unfounded charge against the Mayor. But during that episode, it was those heavily armed law enforcement personnel who precipitated and were responsible for creating several minutes of physical chaos. In the end, as the indictment implicitly concedes, no federal agent experienced any injury whatsoever.

In that respect, too, January 6 was entirely different. That day, outnumbered Capitol Police officers stood their ground against hundreds—if not thousands—of rioters who were trying to overrun the Capitol to intimidate the legislators inside in hopes of overriding a national election. A substantial number of those brave officers were seriously injured. Yet, the Department of Justice has dropped the charges against over 160 individuals accused of that conduct.

Later in the filing, McIver cites three particularly egregious cases that were still pending when DOJ dismissed all these cases: Daniel Ball, Tim Boughner, and Jake Lang, all of whom were detained pretrial until Trump made their charges go away.

What, McIver ponders, led to the starkly different prosecutorial decisions? Well, there’s proof, in the form of a letter then Acting Deputy Attorney General and now Third Circuit Judge who might preside over any appeal, Emil Bove, sent ordering the firing of a bunch of FBI Agents who had been involved in January 6 investigations.

What explains the government’s insistence on prosecuting Congresswoman McIver, but not rioters charged with serious violence under the same statute? Senior federal officials have made ample public statements that point inexorably to the answer. In particular, the leadership of the Department of Justice, echoing the President’s official proclamation, has described the January 6 prosecutions as “a grave national injustice.”1

1 Mem. from Acting Dep. Att’y Gen. Emil Bove to Acting Dir., FBI (Jan. 31, 2025) (quoting Proc. No. 10887, 90 Fed. Reg. 8331, 8331 (Jan. 20, 2025)), https://perma.cc/C5NB-KV3V.

Motion to Restrain

In support of her selective prosecution bid, McIver also cites the statements that are the subject of her motion to restrain extrajudicial statements:

  • A press release accusing the Members of Congress of breaking into the Delaney Hall.
  • A Tweet disseminating a heavily edited picture of the alleged assault involving McIver.
  • Another press release purporting the debunk the “fake news” correcting prior false claims about the incident.
  • Yet another press release implicating McIver in an assault on an ICE officer that happened in California (which ICE was trying to blame on Salud Carbajal).
  • One more press release, one of the recurrent ones that claim wildly inflated numbers for ICE assaults, again implicating McIver in those assaults.

For each of the statements, McIver notes how the communications are misleading and how they prejudice her case.

When Kilmar Abrego tried to get DHS gagged, the judge said they weren’t parties to his criminal case. But here, DHS runs the facility where this happened and employs the men who claim to have been assaulted.

McIver is asking for an order that these statements be taken down and threatens to ask for her prosecution to be dismissed if DHS continues such statements.

So here’s how this will all play out: If DOJ wants to sustain this prosecution, they will need to first defend against the Congressional immunity claim — including a potential interlocutory appeal — and Todd Blanche and John Sauer will be held to claims they made last year to get Trump out of trouble. But even as that’s proceeding, Judge Semper may well order DOJ to provide more discovery, either on her normal discovery request or to support the selective prosecution claim. Because, yeah, it is pretty shady that two of the three most important witnesses to this alleged assault somehow don’t have any Body Cam footage, and yeah, it’s pretty shady that DOJ claims not to have access to prison footage that might capture additional calls to DOJ.

Meanwhile, Baraka’s malicious prosecution lawsuit has done nothing since June; perhaps DOJ is thinking twice about defending it? In that case, Ricky Patel made sworn statements to justify Baraka’s arrest that conflict with the evidence here. If he didn’t already know, Baraka has just learned that before Patel made those statements, Todd Blanche personally ordered him to arrest Baraka, even after Baraka complied with Patel’s order to leave the facility. And if this were to go to trial, Patel’s inconsistent statements would be a central focus of the case.

I don’t know how this case will end.

But it won’t end well for DOJ.

Update: There’s one more way this filing may prove useful: the Democratic members of Congress lawsuit against DHS for denying them access to detention facilities. DOJ got a delay in their response, but the MoCs could file an amended complaint.

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Constitutional Cope in the Time of Texas Hold’em

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There’s a coping mechanism I often see that involves stating we will get justice against the perpetrators of fascism once we “win.” It goes something like, “when we win we’ll hold all of these ICE goons accountable.”

I get the urge: you’re feeling outraged and helpless right now and one way to feel better — one way to affirm justice — is to imagine a more just time in the future. I get the import of accountability.

I say it’s a coping mechanism for several reasons. Making the statement is an act of obscuring how difficult or, in this case, almost impossible delivering justice to these particular people are. Those ICE goons? Most of what they’re doing is currently legal or at least covered by qualified immunity. To the extent we ever held torturers accountable, they were low-level schlubs and not the architects who successfully hid behind legal advice. So if you want to hold the ICE goons accountable, you’re going to have to figure out how to do something far bigger than just winning an election.

And making the statement often serves as a substitute for doing the work — any work — to actually win.

If the ICE goons make you feel helpless — which after all is the intent — why not search out one of the efforts to resist, like the ones Michelle Goldberg described here?

[I]f Los Angeles is a testing ground for mass deportation, it’s also a place to see how the resistance is evolving. Though there have been some big anti-Trump marches this year, many of those most horrified by this administration are looking for more immediate, tangible ways to thwart it. The movement against ICE in Los Angeles — one that is starting to take root, in different forms, in cities like New York — is part of a growing shift from symbolic protest to direct action.

It may be no match for the Trumpian leviathan. But it can protect a few people who might otherwise get swept into the black hole of the administration’s deportation machine. And in the most optimistic scenario, it could be a foundation for a new, nationwide opposition movement.

[snip]

With ICE increasingly seen as the front line of a growing police state, people all over the country are looking for ways to stand up to it. In New York, ICE arrests seem to be concentrated in immigration courts, where agents have been snatching people after their asylum hearings, even when judges ask them to come back for further proceedings. Activists, in turn, are showing up at the courts to try to provide whatever support to immigrants they can. They hand out fliers — languages include Spanish, French, Urdu, Punjabi and Mandarin — informing immigrants of the few rights they have. They collect emergency contacts and immigration ID numbers so that when people are arrested, someone can inform their loved ones and track them through the detention system.

When the hearings are over, the volunteers try, often in vain, to escort the immigrants past intimidating groups of masked, armed ICE agents to the elevators and onto the street. That’s what New York City’s comptroller, Brad Lander, was doing when he was arrested in June.

As Goldberg notes, that way to stop feeling helpless about your neighbor being kidnapped can also build the kind of network that we need in order to win, a network that not coincidentally is not conceived in terms of political party.

There’s another version of this that involves writing entire columns akin to the comment about the ICE goons: What will Democrats do, will they do it, if we win?

With little consideration of how we win or what a win is.

Two examples from yesterday demonstrate the type — but also point to where the discussion could be, and why.

After reviewing two of the horrible events of the last day — the frivolous attack on James Boasberg and the confirmation of Emil Bove — JV Last inexplicably pitches an entire post that assumes Dems are feckless but also imagines what we should do if those feckless Dems manage to win in spite of their fecklessness.

I have some questions for Democrats, and for you, that I hope you’ll discuss in the comments. I want a real conversation about wisdom because it’s possible that I’m a few degrees too hot on this stuff.

  • Should the next Democratic president fire FBI Director Kash Patel, even if there is no immediate pretext? Why or why not?
  • Should a Democratic Congress attempt to remove Bove from the bench since he apparently perjured himself during his confirmation hearing?
  • Should a Democratic president pressure universities to adopt policies friendly to liberalism and punish universities that caved to the Trump administration, in order to establish that collaboration comes with a cost?
  • Should a future Democratic administration pursue all available modes of accountability for federal agents who broke the law under the Trump administration by—just as a for-instance—filing false charges against innocent civilians?

Or should Democrats who gain power in the future decide that it’s better to focus on kitchen-table issues. To work with Republicans to pass bipartisan legislation that impacts Real People’s Lives.

Offering advice for a potential 2026 candidate, and so imagining how not to be feckless as a candidate, Dan Froomkin adopts a more optimistic stance, offering a 10-point plan of what to do if Dems do win.

Someone I know who is thinking about working for a primary campaign in the fall asked me the other day what I would want to see in a 2026 congressional candidate.

And from my perspective covering the resistance, my answer was clear: I want to see some fight.

My view is that if Democrats want to harness the energy of the resistance in the 2026 elections, they need to start talking now about how to stymie Trump as much as possible in the short term and how to undo the damage he has wrought in the long term.

I’m honestly not so clear myself on the short term. As long as Trump is president, given his veto power, it seems to me it will be impossible to pursue a positive legislative agenda even if Democrats win both chambers. And if Trump is willing to hold the country hostage, which he is, Democrats might even have to make some concessions simply to keep the government functioning at all. Does anyone have any thoughts about the best course? Please share them with me.

I do know that a Democratic House majority starting in 2027 could aggressively use subpoena power to fully investigate the many abuses committed by this administration, setting the stage for reforms to come. Every candidate ought to make that a solemn vow.

As for the long term, candidates should enthusiastically address the need to restore sanity and good government to the country after Trump is gone.

I’d like to see people campaign on something along the lines of a 10-point plan. And my first draft is something like this:

  1. Restore the rule of law. This includes rebuilding a devastated and defiled Justice Department, prosecuting the rampant law-breaking of the Trump era, and expanding the Supreme Court.
  2. Stop mass deportations. That includes defunding ICE, closing concentration camps, restoring temporary protected status, respecting asylum claims, ending to the harassment of people on visas, and welcoming more international students.
  3. Revive the civil service. That means hiring back tens of thousands of workers who were driven out, undoing organizational changes, reestablishing the tradition of a nonpartisan bureaucracy.

I read these, and then I read the Texas gerrymander plans that aim to turn Democrats into a permanent minority, and wonder, what the fuck are we doing here, people?

You need to find a way to ensure there will be some kind of real representation left, you need to find some way to ensure martial law like Trump tested in Los Angeles doesn’t disrupt elections, you need to figure out what the fuck DOJ is doing by demanding election rolls from every state before you can even think about what we do if Democrats win in 2026.

Even the question of retaliating against the Texas gerrymander — which would involve rolling back efforts that have made states more democratic — for short term survival is not an easy one (as Semafor lays out).

Beyond the difficult political problems, gerrymandering is at the core of partisan and racial polarization that is Trump’s magic sauce. This is a fight not just about whether Republicans can insulate themselves from accountability for the wildly unpopular policies they’ve rubber stamped in service of their liege Donald Trump. It’s a fight over whether Americans can find common ground with their neighbors.

Without that — without finding some way to break through the polarization that Republicans use to demonize Democrats and people of color and in so doing blinding their followers to the pain they’re imposing on them, the followers — you will not defeat fascism.

Which is why I think Last and Froomkin aren’t thinking big enough, and in the process aren’t really addressing the problem.

Fire Kash? No brainer. But the problem isn’t Kash, per se. It’s that in the zero sum game of polarization, right wingers are wielding “justice” as a political tool, all the while duping their rubes into believing Democrats did that, because they tried to hold a privileged white billionaire accountable for his actions. Jim Comey did stupid things because he was afraid right wing FBI agents would leak and make him — make FBI — look bad. Chris Wray refused to defend what happened before he arrived, making it easy to spin conspiracy theories about how Donald Trump was the one unfairly treated during an 2016 election in which FBI may have decisively hurt Hillary. At least Kash’s rabid partisanship has the potential of backfiring — certainly it has so far on Epstein — because he’ll never be able to deliver on the promise of children’s books.

Ending mass deportations, restoring civil service? Of course. But why conceive of that as a simple reversal, a restoration of the protections that right wingers easily hijacked? What would it take to provide real job security for the weather forecasters and cancer researchers if we ever get to bring them back? And should we purge FBI and ICE of all those leakers and goons first, or is there a review of Trump’s abuses provides a way to fix past problems? What does “restoring rule of law” mean when right wingers have embraced a mafia state? How do you restore faith in rule of law from both right and left, especially when the norms that provide the necessary foundation are gone?

There are a list of things that need to happen to address this: Dramatically curtail the Presidential pardon. Establish a way — a replacement for the failed experiment with Special Counsels — to hold the political accountable that is insulated from partisan chain of command. Eliminate the abuse of informants. We have barely begun to conceive of how much Trump has thrown out all rules prohibiting domestic spying, which provides an opportunity to rethink how to protect privacy in the age of dragnets (and how to safely disaggregate the data Trump is accumulating on one place). Why not take Trump’s debasement of FBI and supercharge of ICE as an impetus to rethink Federal law enforcement entirely and take all of it out of DHS, where it has far fewer rules? And yes, you’d have to do something about SCOTUS, but why stop at expanding SCOTUS instead of reconceiving of it, finding away to make it something other than the zero sum fight it has been for three decades?

Trump has destroyed the justice system — Trump has stolen rule of law from ordinary people, whether they’re Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, victims of his fraudster buddies he let off scot free, or American taxpayers whose shared national interest he has converted for political gain. He has replaced it with a spoils system that rewards loyalty. That makes the task of restoring it far harder, but it also provides an opportunity to show the cost of Trump’s corruption, and to pitch this as a fight against corruption, not Trump per se.

I’m not saying you’d be able to do this immediately with a House majority in 2026 or the White House in 2028. You wouldn’t, unless Trump precipitated a collapse so major that America is rebuilding as it struggles to feed its people, not at all an impossibility. But the reason Joe Biden, a man who enacted historic legislation with the thinnest of margins, failed is because the rising flood of fascism wiped all that away within weeks, even though Biden anticipated some of the means (like the attack on civil servants) Trump used to do that.

There are really better ways to fight fascism than focusing on what magical ponies we’ll ride if we “win.” But if you’re going to do that, consider what would need to happen to actually reverse the tide.

Update: As if on cue, The American Prospect has a thoughtful piece on what kind of reforms we could impose in the wake of Trump that might fix things. It focuses closely on the post-Watergate reforms.

A post-Trump legislative agenda could begin by reinforcing the post-Watergate laws and reaffirming the public purposes that motivated them. Congress could strengthen the enforcement provisions of the Impoundment Control Act. In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling about the president’s power to remove executive branch officials, Congress could put inspectors general out of the president’s reach and under its own protection as part of the Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency (although Trump has tried to control congressional agencies too).

Congress could also enact a new National Emergencies Act that would limit the ability of presidents to declare forever emergencies. In 1983, the Supreme Court struck down the provisions in the 1976 act that enabled a single chamber of Congress to withhold consent for an emergency’s continuance. Under the Court’s decision, Congress now must have a two-thirds majority in each house to overcome a presidential veto and end an emergency. As Josh Chafetz of Georgetown Law School suggested recently in an unpublished paper, a new Emergencies Act could—like the original 1976 act—terminate all existing emergencies and end lurking emergency powers in statutes that Congress no longer thinks necessary. Most important, it could establish new sunset provisions. Emergencies would end within a short period (perhaps 60 days) and be nonrenewable unless approved under expedited procedures by a joint resolution of Congress. Those provisions, as Chafetz argues, would afford presidents short-term powers in genuine emergencies but ensure that Congress retains the power to make lasting policy.

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With Emil Bove’s Confirmation, Trump Hones His Criminal Protection Racket

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After a 50-49 vote confirming him (Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against, with all Democrats), Emil Bove will be installed in New Jersey’s Third Circuit seat. He will remain there until retirement, death, impeachment, or criminal prosecution — or, quite possibly, promotion to SCOTUS — removes him.

It pains me to catalog the ways in which Bove’s confirmation serves and advances Trump’s criminal protection racket. But we need to understand how Trump plans to destroy rule of law and Bove’s central role in it.

Reward for keeping Trump out of prison

Bove left SDNY at a point when his career stalled. He had faced problems because of his bullying and supervised the worst Brady violation in recent memory. After briefly representing Guo Wengui’s co-conspirator (and facing a conflict review because he had supervised the investigation against her), he joined up with Todd Blanche on Trump’s defense team.

There’s little indication he did anything of note on the defense team. John Sauer masterminded the successful ploy for immunity and Aileen Cannon needed little help in finding an excuse to throw out the stolen documents case.

But he did enough to reassure Trump that he would be Trump’s fixer, and so he ran DOJ until Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche were confirmed, and remained in a key role after that.

Reward for the abuse and misconduct Bove risked

During his short tenure at DOJ, Bove did at least three things that have merited ethical review and/or could justify criminal review:

  • He engaged in what Judge Dale Ho suggested was a quid pro quo, dismissing the case against Eric Adams in exchange for pliant cooperation from NYC’s Mayor
  • He repeatedly ordered lawyers to act in contravention of their oath and ethical obligations and fired those who did not comply
  • He gave the order to unload over two hundred men into a concentration camp based on an Alien Enemies Act declaration that Trump should have known was riddled with false claims; the men credibly claim they were tortured and raped there

All of these are the subject of some kind of review (in the form of bar complaints and the contempt proceeding before Boasberg). But even if those reviews find Bove engaged in misconduct, without the political pressure that failed here, he’ll be largely immune from consequences.

Continued debasement of the Senate

Republicans confirmed Bove because of loyalty to Trump. In doing so, they blew off:

  • A letter signed by over 900 former DOJ lawyers
  • A letter signed by 80 former judges, including Michael Luttig
  • Three whistleblower complaints, two focused on the immigration defiance and a third focused on his role in the Eric Adams quid pro quo (Whistleblower Aid revealed the complaint submitted to DOJ IG got “lost” until yesterday)

There’s surely a range of rationalizations Senators adopted to explain why they did it. A terror of Trump’s wrath, a disinterest in their own constitutional obligations, a belief in laughably thin claims that the objections to Bove — all rooted in rule of law, from astonishingly large bipartisan judges and lawyers who adhere to rule of law — were partisan attacks.

Every time Trump gets the Senate to confirm someone who is facially unqualified — starting with Pete Hegseth, moving on to RFK Jr, then to install his defense attorneys at Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, and Solicitor General, onto the conspiracy theorists at FBI, and now to Bove — he expands their tolerance to do more of the same.

He has domesticated the Senate, like dumb slobbery puppies who keep rolling in their own shit.

Eviction of real lawyers

I’m not sure I have a good count of all the principled lawyers that Emil Bove left in his wake. They include:

  • Lawyers who prosecuted Trump’s mob
  • Lawyers who prosecuted Trump for stealing classified documents
  • The entire Eric Adams prosecution team
  • People at Public Integrity who refused to sign off on Bove’s corrupt quid pro quo
  • Denise Cheung, who refused to hold payments based on James O’Keefe conspiracy theories
  • Erez Reuveni

Which is to say, before he left DOJ, Bove removed around career 50 lawyers who believed in upholding the law, even against the powerful.

Unexplained DC Circuit complicity in Bove’s impunity

For the entirety of the time Bove’s confirmation was pending, two Trump appointed judges, Greg Katsas and Neomi Rao, sat on Boasberg’s contempt ruling, stalling any discovery to learn more about Bove (and others’) misconduct on the Alien Enemies Act case.

It’s bad enough that they stalled on this. How they decided to do so concerns me even more. Were they taking instructions from someone?

Punishment of real judges

In curious timing, yesterday Pam Bondi filed a misconduct complaint against James Boasberg in the DC Circuit.

The conspiracy theory behind the complaint has been bubbling around for a few weeks: Someone leaked details of a Judicial Conference meeting days before Judge Boasberg imposed a stay on Trump’s Alien Enemies Act deportations to propagandist Margot Cleveland.

Steve Vladeck explains more about the complaint and argues this is intended to throw red meat to Trump’s base and cow other judges. But it may also be designed to give Katsas and Rao a pretext to do something other than let the contempt case move forward. That is, this may be an effort to shut down further inquiry in how Trump’s DOJ knowingly sent 200 men, many innocent, to a concentration camp as part of a quid pro quo to help Nayib Bukele bury his own ties to MS-13.

A captive judge at Bedminster

Bove is from Pennsylvania, not New Jersey. By appointing Bove to the NJ seat (a Delaware seat was also open), Trump ensures that his own defense attorney will be available (though arguably conflicted) for any problems that arise for him in his summer home, Bedminster, which also happens to be where some of the still-missing stolen documents disappeared to.

We had a window to reverse Trump’s mafia state before he packed the courts. With Bove’s confirmation, that window begins to close.

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Republicans Will Reward Emil Bove for Sending Innocent Men to a Concentration Camp

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John Thune has invoked cloture for Emil Bove’s nomination to the Third Circuit. And while Lisa Murkowski voted against cloture and Susan Collins say she’ll vote against his confirmation, it nevertheless remains virtually certain that Republicans will confirm him.

Consider what that vote to confirm says Republican Senators believe qualifies a man for the job:

  • He helped Trump avoid accountability for attacking the Senate in a bid to stay in power.
  • He fired a bunch of people who prosecuted the people who attacked the Senate, effectively firing the people who upheld rule of law.
  • He helped Trump avoid accountability for stealing over a hundred classified documents and store them in a broom closet.
  • He helped a really corrupt Democrat who allegedly put his own pocketbook and Turkish interests above safety considerations to avoid accountability as part of a quid pro quo deal meant to undermine New York self-rule.
  • He gave the order that doomed 233 men, many of them innocent of any crime, to spend four months in a concentration camp.

It’s the last one that really alarms me.

The Republican Party is preparing to reward Emil Bove with a lifetime seat on an appellate court because he sent hundreds of men to a concentration camp, many based on little more than their tattoos.

If you have Republican Senators, please call them and let them know you see what they are doing.

Update: ProPublica has a new profile of the men Bove sent to CECOT. For each man, they describe circumstances of his detention, whether he had any criminal charges, and whether he had tattoos (as a majority do).

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Chuck Grassley Complicit in Sending Dozens of Innocent Men to a Concentration Camp

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As I laid out the other day, Chuck Grassley made a bunch of transparent excuses so he could cover up how Emil Bove gave advice to DHS that resulted in them defying an order from Judge James Boasberg.

It’s not me saying it. It is senior DOJ official Yaakov Roth saying it.

On March 16, he told Erez Reuveni and others that Bove was the one who — falsely — told DHS they could deplane flights that Boasberg had ordered be turned around without violating the court’s order.

On March 14, Bove said you might have to tell a judge “fuck you” to ensure Stephen Miller could use the Alien Enemies Act to deport people with no oversight. On March 15, Bove provided affirmatively false information to DHS, resulting in them defying Boasberg’s order — and with their actions, stranding hundreds of men, some completely innocent, in a brutal concentration camp in El Salvador.

Grassley must have recognized his arguments were transparent bullshit. Because in today’s hearing on Bove’s nominate, Grassley broke parliamentary rules to prevent Cory Booker, the home Senator on this nomination, from arguing against it.

 

As Sheldon Whitehouse notes, there are two parliamentary arguments that Bove’s nomination was not properly advanced. First, that Grassley blew off Booker’s point of order, then that there was a quorum to vote through the nomination.

HuffPo has more.

Chuck Grassley broke the rules to try to rush through Emil Bove’s lifetime appointment before — as Whitehouse noted — his conduct is investigated as criminal contempt.

He is protecting a guy who unloaded dozens of innocent men into a concentration camp. Worse, he is breaking the rules to promote Emil Bove to a lifetime appointment to reward him for stranding innocent men in a concentration camp.

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Old Man Chuck Grassley Got Snookered by Emil Bove’s Contemptuous Dodge

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Senate Judiciary Democrats asked Chuck Grassley to hold a hearing with whistleblower Erez Reuveni to learn about Emil Bove’s contempt in the face of orders Judge James Boasberg gave DOJ on March 15. In a letter that carefully dodges smoking gun proof that Emil Bove did command others to blow off Boasberg’s order, Grassley refused.

I’m going to assume that Chuck Grassley is just really old and so vulnerable to being duped by someone devious like Bove. Otherwise, of course, we’d have to conclude he’s complicit in a clear attempt to deport innocent men to a concentration camp at all costs.

Grassley’s three main rebuttals of Reuveni’s allegations are:

  • DOJ has gotten appellate relief on at least some of the misconduct Reuveni reported
  • Emil Bove made the comment about telling a judge “fuck you” before Boasberg issued any orders
  • Bove testified under oath that he did not order any DOJ lawyers to blow off Boasberg’s order

Grassley pretends that the files handed over by Reuveni include “almost none” that “include, reference, or even cite” Bove.

Almost none of the additional documents you published include, reference, or even cite Mr. Bove.

Almost none is not none, as I’ll show below.

Grassley further claims that most of the files reflect “litigation strategy about the scope of court orders.”

Most of the communications merely reflect Administration attorneys internally debating or discussing litigation strategy and the scope of court orders. Debate about the scope of court orders is fundamentally inconsistent with an intention to ignore them. Moreover, many of the legal positions discussed in the documents were ultimately advanced in federal court as the formal position of the United States, and the Administration has received at least some appellate relief in each of the cases described.

With regards to the JGG lawsuit to which the “fuck you” comment is pertinent, that relief consists of two Trump appointees stalling a contempt motion for months, as both TPM and NYT pointed out today. Here’s how TPM’s David Kurtz described it.

The DC appeals court — a three-judge panel composed of Trump appointees Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao and Obama appointee Cornelia Pillard (who opposed the move) — placed an administrative stay on Boasberg’s contempt proceedings way back on April 18. What is usually supposed to be a short-term pause in the case has now dragged on for nearly three months.

In that time, former DOJ career lawyer Erez Reuveni has revealed bombshell internal DOJ emails and texts. Those documents show that Bove, in his role as principal associate deputy attorney general, gave the green light for continuing with the March 15 removals of Venezuelan nationals to CECOT in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act in spite of Boasberg’s order blocking the deportations and directing the planes carrying the detainees to turn around. (For his part, Bove denies violating any court orders, and the Justice Department has made the preposterous argument that Boasberg’s written order didn’t include the direction to turn the planes around and that trumped his oral demand that they do so.)

In slow-rolling the contempt inquiry, the DC appeals court hasn’t just enabled Bove (who has engaged in other egregious conduct at DOJ). It has hung Boasberg out to dry, done nothing to staunch the Trump administration’s blatant defiance of court orders in other cases, and has left the judicial branch more exposed to a rogue executive determined to expand his power at the expense of the judiciary.

The relief Grassley is relying on is, in fact, partisan stonewalling.

That matters, because he is replicating a corrupt dodge that Bove — and DOJ itself — are both adopting.

That corrupt dodge starts, first of all, with his claim that Reuveni’s “fuck you” allegation — corroborated in four sets of texts exchanged with colleagues during the weekend in question — came before any judge had issued orders.

The gravamen of the allegations is that Mr. Bove directed Justice Department attorneys to ignore court orders, but (1) the meeting with Mr. Bove occurred before there was any litigation or court order to follow;

That’s true: Bove made the “fuck you” comment at a meeting on March 14. Boasberg issued the order not to unload any planes with Alien Enemies Act detainees on the evening of March 15.

Grassley makes much of the fact that August Flentje told DOJ HR that Bove told the lawyers to avoid an order prohibiting the AEA flights at all costs.

In an April 8th letter addressed to the Justice Department’s Human Resources Division, August Flentje—Mr. Reuveni’s former supervisor—stated: “The Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General [Bove] advised our team that we must avoid a court order halting an upcoming operation to implement the Act at all costs.”1 This statement was made under penalty of perjury months before Mr. Reuveni made the claims in his whistleblower disclosure, and directly contradicts his assertions. Mr. Bove’s comments to subordinate Justice Department litigators— made in advance of anticipated litigation—advising them to avoid a court order that would negatively impact a mission is inconsistent with instructions to ignore a court order, and entirely consistent with Mr. Bove’s sworn testimony.

But again, that was March 14.

They didn’t avoid an order prohibiting the operation. Drew Ensign tried his damndest to mislead Boasberg about flights in the air, but Boasberg nevertheless issued the order.

Boasberg specifically ordered DOJ to turn the planes around, not to deplane the planes.

So, Mr. Ensign, the first point is that I — that you shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States, but those people need to be returned to the United States. However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.

Boasberg did give the order that Emil Bove was so inexplicably desperate to avoid.

And that’s where Grassley gets either cute or duped. He quotes Bove stating, under oath, “I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order” (with equivocal comments, not under oath, from Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi).

At his hearing, under oath, Mr. Bove firmly stated, “I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order.” The Deputy Attorney General issued a statement confirming that he also attended the meeting, and “at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.” In another statement, the Attorney General unequivocally said that “no one was ever asked to defy a court order.”

All very nifty, Senator, except when you consider the smoking gun that does name Bove by his title, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General.

Yaakov Roth, a top Civil Division lawyer documented in an email to Reuveni and others that PADAG (Bove) “advised DHS last night that the deplaning of the flights that had departed US airspace prior [sic] the court’s minute order was permissible under the law and the court’s order.”

Only it wasn’t.

Boasberg specifically ordered DOJ to inform its clients to turn the flights around, not to deplane the planes.

And then Bove instructed DHS — not DOJ lawyers, but DHS personnel, possibly including lawyers — something different.

Bove instructed DHS they could do something impermissible under the order Boasberg gave. And that’s the core of the contempt for which Boasberg found probable cause that two Trump appointees have bottled up at DC Circuit.

By mid-Sunday morning, the picture of what had happened the previous night came into clearer focus. It appeared that the Government had transferred members of the Plaintiff class into El Salvador’s custody hours after this Court’s injunction prohibited their deportation under the Proclamation. Worse, boasts by Defendants intimated that they had defied the Court’s Order deliberately and gleefully. The Secretary of State, for instance, retweeted a post in which, above a news headline noting this Court’s Order to return the flights to the United States, the President of El Salvador wrote: “Oopsie . . . Too late 😂😂.” Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele), X (Mar. 16, 2025, 7:46 a.m. EDT), https://perma.cc/Y384-4TDW, https://perma.cc/6VTW-5KRD (ellipses in original)

Bove may not have lied — this is not proof he told DOJ lawyers to fuck off a Boasberg order. But he did tell DHS to fuck off a Boasberg order.

Which is it, Senator Grassley: Are you old and confused? Or complicit?

Because Erez Reuveni supplied you the smoking gun proving that Bove blew off Boasberg’s order.

Grassley does one other dishonest thing in his letter. He makes much of the fact that Todd Blanche, not Bove himself, fired Reuveni.

The whistleblower also claims his termination was the result of his efforts to ensure agency compliance with court orders. The documents Mr. Reuveni produced, however, reveal that the ultimate termination decision was made and signed by Deputy Attorney General Blanche—not Mr. Bove.

Another of the “almost none” documents that Reuveni turned over showed that Bove was gunning for Reuveni just before he was ousted.

Days before Blanche put Reuveni on leave, April 1, Flentje texted Reuveni about “a nastygram from Emil Bove” conveyed by Roth, the same guy who sent the smoking gun email.

On April 5, a few hours after Todd Blanche did put Reuveni on paid leave, Flentje confirmed that at the meeting on March 15, he “told our host we would not violate a court order.”

That is, in response to Reuveni being placed on leave, Flentje confirmed there was a “through line” from questions about whether or not DOJ would follow an order to Reuveni’s suspension (and subsequent firing).

For Grassley, “almost none” is two too many to sustain his case, because the smoking gun documenting who defied an order after Bove proclaimed he might tell a judge “fuck you” is right there with Bove’s title on it.

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“Fuck You:” Todd Blanche Continues to Flopsweat over Emil Bove’s Contempt

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Among the flood of new developments (two sets of communications from Erez Reuveni corroborating his whistleblower complaint: one, two) and developments (DOJ’s continued obfuscation regarding the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia) detailing DOJ’s abuse of detentions, there are several details that put Todd Blanche in the thick of unlawful efforts to deport men with tattoos.

Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You

The communications Reuveni shared with the Senate Judiciary Committee that were released yesterday confirm that Reuveni has at least two witnesses with whom he discussed the “fuck you” comment Reuveni has attributed to Bove, which Bove, at his confirmation hearing, claimed he couldn’t recall but which he did not deny

For example, Reuveni produced texts between him and an unnamed colleague discussing Drew Ensign’s claimed ignorance of deportation flights under the Alien Enemies Act at an emergency hearing before James Boasberg. Reuveni describes that they were “About to enter the find out phase following fuck around.”

Another set of texts reportedly shows August Flentje texting Reuveni an hour before the planes to El Salvador would land, quipping, “guess its time to find out on the “fuck you,” which Reuveni claims is proof that Flentje heard the “fuck you” comment.

Later that day, Reuveni texted his colleague saying, “Guess we are going to say fuck you to the court,” to which the colleague responds, “Well, Pamela Jo Bondi is.”

Another text exhange, from three days later, again with Flentje, shows one of them suggesting they just submit “an emoji of a middle finger as our filing” asking for a stay of his order. “a picayune middle finger.”

So Reuveni has brought the goods showing that he and his colleagues not just heard the “fuck you” comment, but continued to discuss it for several days.

Emil Bove in the thick of things

Reuveni also substantiated his claims about Emil Bove’s role in all this, notably in a substantive text exchange from the day when Todd Blanche first put Reuveni on paid leave. Days earlier, Flentje had texted Reuveni about “a nastygram from Emil Bove.”

On April 5, a few hours after Todd Blanche put Reuveni on paid leave, Flentje confirmed that at the meeting on March 15, he “told our host we would not violate a court order.”

Reuveni glossed that text this way:

The exchange demonstrates that Flentje was at the March 14 meeting during which Bove said the government might have to say “fuck you” to courts and that Flentje sees a connection between that meeting and Mr. Reuveni’s placement on administrative leave.

But the smoking gun putting aspiring Circuit Court Judge Emil Bove at the center of a decision to blow off Judge James Boasberg’s order is this email in which a top Civil Division political appointee, Yaakov Roth (the same guy who would pass on nastygrams from Bove weeks later), confirmed that he had “been told by ODAG that the principal associate deputy attorney general” — PDAAG, meaning Bove — “advised DHS last night that the deplaning of the flights that had departed US airspace prior to the court’s minute order was permissible under the law.”

Reuveni described this email in his complaint, but here he has produced it.

Emil Bove gave the order to defy Boasberg’s order.

Notably, this email is unlike all others in the communications he turned over. It appears to be a paper copy. There are definitely questions about when and how Reuveni obtained all the other communications (remember that Flentje was put on leave for a while but not fired). Of some interest, Reuveni’s texts with Flentje are in a different format — perhaps a different app — than the ones he sent to other colleagues. But this communication, in which a very senior DOJ official names Bove as the guy who ordered DHS to unload the planes, was captured in paper, not digital, form.

So Reuveni appears to have substantially corroborated his claims, even if he had to resort, in one case, to a paper copy of an email to do so.

Todd Blanche’s flopsweat

That matters not just for Emil Bove’s bid to be a Circuit Court Judge (which sadly will likely still win the support of the GOP anyway), but also for Todd Blanche’s credibility.

Todd Blanche doesn’t tweet all that much, but each time Reuveni has made his case, Blanche has taken to Xitter to squeal loudly.

The day NYT first published Reuveni’s whistleblower complaint, Blanche labeled the formal whistleblower complaint as a leak to the press violating ethical guidelines. Then he claimed that “not a single individual” except Reuveni “agrees with the statements cavalierly printed” by the NYT, which I noted at the time suggested that Blanche had already tested these cover stories.

Well, that’s interesting, because Reuveni has now presented proof that Flentje and one other colleague at least used to believe it.

Yesterday, in the wake of the release of these communications, Blanche (and Pam Bondi) took to wailing on Xitter again, accusing Reuveni — even after he produced that paper email proof that Emil Bove ordered DHS to unload the planes — of falsehoods, even while accusing Reuveni of being fired not for refusing an illegal order, but for “breaching his ethical duties.”

Blanche keeps claiming there was no order to defy, even after Reuveni presented corroboration — even in the face of efforts to avoid putting anything in writing — that everyone at DOJ knew there was.

Which is why I find two other details of interest. As noted above, Blanche tried to deny that Bove suggested they would tell courts “fuck you” by claiming he had been at the March 14 meeting where, Reuveni alleges, Bove envisioned telling courts “fuck you.”

I was at the meeting described in the article and at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.

In his complaint, Reuveni did not include Blanche in the list of people who were at the meeting.

On Friday March 14 , 2025, Mr. Reuveni received notice ofhis promotion toActing Deputy Director ofthe Office of Immigration Litigation. That same day, following news reports that the President intended to sign a presidential proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), Mr. Reuveni was summoned to a meeting by Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG) of OIL, Drew Ensign. At the meeting were Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General (PADAG) Emil Bove, Counselor to the Deputy Attorney General James McHenry, Associate Deputy Attorney General (ADAG) Paul Perkins, DAAG Ensign, Acting Director for OIL and Mr. Reuveni’s direct supervisor, August Flentje, and other OIL attorneys.

Now, Reuveni’s original whistleblower complaint is almost entirely unredacted. The three exceptions — redacted because they might disclose materials that remain covered by a duty of confidentiality — are in a paragraph describing that March 14 meeting.

At the meeting Bove indicated to those in attendance that the AEA proclamation would soon be signed and that one or more planes containing individuals subject to the AEA would be taking off over the weekend – meaning Saturday, March 15 and Sunday, March 16. Bove did not provide further details and [half line redacted]19 Bove indicated [half line redacted]20 and stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what.

Bove then made a remark concerning the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated. Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts “fuck you” and ignore any such court order. Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room. Mr. Reuveni and others were quickly ushered out of the room. Notwithstanding Bove’s directive, Mr. Reuveni left the meeting understanding that DOJ would tell DHS to follow all court orders.21

19 This clause is redacted because it is not clear that an exception to the lawyer’s duty of confidentiality applies here.

20 This clause is redacted because it is not clear that an exception to the lawyer’s duty of confidentiality applies here.

21 Mr.Reuveni left the meeting with this impression because [redacted]. This clause is redacted because it is not clear that an exception to the lawyer’s duty of confidentiality applies here. [my emphasis]

Reuveni and his attorneys view a lot of material that might qualify as attorney-client or deliberative privileged as exempted for some reason. But not these two passages and one footnote, the former of which seemingly relate to the reason why Bove said the planes had to take off. Bove insisted that the planes had to take off and said something that remains privileged, and then he said they might have to tell the courts, “fuck you.”

Perhaps any privilege covering those would fall under a different privilege?

Which is interesting because, in an interview with Devlin Barrett published yesterday, Reuveni clarified something about Blanche’s claim to have been at the meeting: According to Reuveni, Blanche came into the meeting, whispered something to Bove, then left, only after which did Bove start threatening to tell judges to fuck off.

The No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, has denied Mr. Reuveni’s account, asserting he was at the same meeting and never heard Mr. Bove suggest the department disregard court orders.

“The claims about Department of Justice leadership are utterly false,” Mr. Blanche has said.

Mr. Reuveni disputed Mr. Blanche’s account. The deputy attorney general, he said, briefly entered the conference room during the March 14 meeting, but only to speak privately with Mr. Bove. Mr. Blanche then left and did not participate in the meeting, Mr. Reuveni said.

Only after the one-on-one discussion between Mr. Bove and Mr. Blanche did Mr. Bove use an expletive to suggest the Justice Department might choose to ignore court orders, Mr. Reuveni said.

Blanche’s brief entry into that meeting seems to exactly coincide with those two still-privileged redactions.

Blanche doesn’t tweet much.

What he does spend a great deal of his time doing — which is appropriate, I guess, for Trump’s lead defense attorney — is try to cover up this entire corrupt scheme. First he launched a witch hunt into the sources debunking Trump’s false claims behind the Alien Enemies Act invocation, then Pam Bondi reversed the media guidelines in an effort to assist that fight.

One of the very first public things Todd Blanche did as DAG was to launch a witch hunt into NYT’s source debunking Trump’s claims in the Alien Enemies Act. Then, when Pam Bondi reversed the media protections put into place by Merrick Garland, she cited that story as well. The seniormost officials at DOJ are using the Department to hunt down evidence of their own complicity in human rights violations. And Blanche’s intemperate response to Reuveni’s allegations looks to be more of the same.

This whole scheme — in which DOJ cooperated with Nayib Bukele so Bukele could make damning witnesses unavailable to prosecutors in the US, so DOJ could plop a bunch of mostly-innocent Venezuelans in a concentration camp as bait that Trump could attempt to use to free prisoners in Venezuela (which raises questions about those detainees in Venezuela), which Stephen Miller could use to spin false claims that migrants are terrorists — is bullshit.

All of it.

All of it is wildly corrupt on its face, but there is something about the scheme that is even more dangerous for Trump and the various men who have served as his defense attorneys.

And Trump’s defense attorney turned DAG keeps piping up to discredit himself, emphasize his flopsweat, and invite further revelations from the guy he fired in hopes all this would go away.

Update, July 13: Corrected the number of redactions in Reuveni’s complaint.

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Judge Stringer Bell: Emil Bove Confirms Erez Reuveni’s Allegation that He Tried to Avoid Paper Trails

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Emil Bove presented the appearance of a calm collected guy in his confirmation hearing. And Republicans made especially clear they intend to push through Donald Trump’s defense attorney to be Donald Trump’s Circuit Court Judge in New Jersey, where Trump owns a property implicated in one case Bove defended him on.

For much of the hearing, Bove dodged questions successfully, claiming at times he couldn’t answer because something he did at DOJ was not public, claiming at other times that discussing things that are political — like who won the 2020 election!! — would violate the Judicial Canon.

But at the end, Adam Schiff cornered him. Schiff asked whether he said the “fuck you” comment reported in the Erez Reuveni allegation (which Todd Blanche denied happened).

Bove responded that he could not recall (just as he could not recall how many Jan6 prosecutors he had fired or how many Jan6 criminals had been pardoned). But he didn’t deny he said it. “I certainly emphasized the importance of the upcoming operation.”

Schiff asked that the Committee get the notes of that meeting.

Then Schiff turned to Danielle Sassoon’s allegations about Bove’s demand for a quid pro quo for Eric Adams.

Schiff: Let me ask about notes from another meeting which you’re contesting here, and that is the meeting over the decision to dismiss the case — the corruption case — in New York against the Mayor of New York.According to Ms. Sassoon, the US Attorney at the time, during the meeting with Adams’ attorneys, where, she described, um, Adams’ attorneys repeatedly what amounted to a quid pro quo, that you admonished one of the lawyers in the room to stop taking notes. Is that true?

Bove: I don’t believe I instructed that attorney to stop taking notes. I did remark on the fact that he was taking extensive notes. Yes.

Schiff: Why did it concern you that he was taking notes of the meeting?

Bove: Because at that point of the meeting, we were discussing who was responsible for media leaks and I was making the point that only prosecutors had created an extensive record that could support detailed leaks.

Schiff: And you were concerned, were you, that information about this, this, potential quid pro quo might become public? Was that the concern?

Bove: I’ve explained that there was no quid pro quo.

Schiff; Will you provide the notes of that meeting, which you, according to the US Attorney, instructed be collected a the end of the meeting?

Bove: I think a member of my staff may have given that instruction outside my presence. And I defer to the Committee and the Executive Branch on records requests and how they should be handled.

Pam Bondi had, by that point, joined Todd Blanche in overseeing the confirmation hearing for their hatchet man. So Schiff asked that the Committee (Ashley Moody was in the chair) request Bondi and Blanche to make those notes available.

Moody refused.

So Bove dodged that moment, sort of.

But in doing so, Bove confirmed something more substantive from the Reuveni complaint.

Reuveni describes that on March 29, as he was struggling to communicate the scope of an injunction to DHS in the DVD case (the one SCOTUS ruled on Monday), he was affirmatively instructed to stop putting guidance into writing.

Separately, Mr. Reuveni contacted Ensign by phone, who informed him that the head of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations had been given “verbal” notice of the injunction, but again, no written guidance had been disseminated to the agency. Sometime after this call, during the mid-to-late afternoon, Ensign informed Mr. Reuveni by phone that it would be advisable to stop sending emails with many recipients, including Percival, concerning the injunction compliance guidance.41

[snip]

Thereafter, Mr. Reuveni spoke twice with Ensign on the phone between approximately 11:00 a.m. and noon, during which time Ensign told Mr. Reuveni that “leadership” had concluded and directed that no injunction compliance guidance would be issued. Ensign also again told Mr. Reuveni that he should no longer contact DHS asking about guidance.42 Mr. Reuveni informed Ensign that plaintiffs’ counsel had notified OIL attorneys that their class member clients were being or had been prepared for removal, and without further information this appeared to be a violation ofthe injunction. Ensign made comments to the effect that he agreed with Mr. Reuveni, acknowledged the decisions were not ideal and would make it harder to win cases, and stated that he was not a decision maker in these circumstances.

41 The Department ofJustice’s implementation ofrestrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(13).

42 The Department ofJustice’s implementation ofrestrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(13). [my emphasis]

Two days later, he got the same instruction, this time explicitly on Bove’s orders.

On April 1, Mr. Reuveni was again told to stop asking questions. Mr. Reuveni received phone call from Acting AAG Roth in which Roth relayed that Bove was very unhappy that Mr. Reuveni had contacted counsel at various agencies to ascertain whether DOJ had violated court order Roth conveyed that Mr. Reuveni should stop emailing agency counsel on the matter to instead communicate by phone only where possible.46 Mr. Reuveni understood this instruction to be based on leadership’s aim to avoid generating written material subject to disclosure through FOIA.

46 The Department of Justice’s implementation of restrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302 b 13). [my emphasis]

The same thing happened on following days in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case: He was specifically asked to stop putting things  — most notably, his questions about whether there was any basis for claims that KAG had ties to MS-13 — in writing.

DOJ leadership never did. Instead, on several occasions on April 2 and 3 through both phone calls and email, Mr. Reuveni was directed by McHenry, through Roth and Ensign, to cease making requests of DHS and DOS, to stop asking for facts supporting any possible defense ofthe case, that no “asks” of El Salvador of any sort should be made, and to rest on threshold jurisdictional arguments at the hearing.48

48 The Department ofJustice’s implementation ofrestrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(13).

This refusal to send out an order about an injunction is also how DOJ dealt with the first injunctions on the attacks on law firms.

Sure: Absent the paper trail being in the hands of the Committee, Bove claims not to remember any of this.

But he confirmed something consistent with Reuveni’s complaint.

He doesn’t like paper trails of his criminal conspiracies.

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Kristi Noem’s Goons Engage in what Emil Bove Calls Election Interference

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Update: Lander has been released. He lost a button. The charges were dropped. 

Further update: The key to Lander’s release was the superb, immediate reporting from The City and Hell Gate. If you are so inclined, please consider a donation.

According to a reporter from The City, Federal agents just detained NYC Comptroller Brad Lander as he accompanied someone from an immigration hearing.

This comes after early voting in the Mayoral primary has already started.

Just as importantly, it comes four months after DOJ dismissed a years-long investigation into Eric Adams for alleged foreign influence peddling because of this very primary.

Back in February, the government provided two bases to excuse their bid to dismiss the prosecution against Adams: because being subjected to the prosecution amounted to election interference, and also interfered with his ability to carry out his duties as Mayor.

5. In connection with that determination and directive, the Acting Deputy Attorney General concluded that dismissal is necessary because of appearances of impropriety and risks of interference with the 2025 elections in New York City, which implicate Executive Order 14147, 90 Fed. Reg. 8235. The Acting Deputy Attorney General reached that conclusion based on, among other things, review of a website2 maintained by a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and an op-ed published by that former U.S. Attorney.3

6. In connection with that determination and directive, the Acting Deputy Attorney General also concluded that continuing these proceedings would interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies. See, e.g., Executive Order 14159, 90 Fed. Reg. 8443; Executive Order 14165, 90 Fed. Reg. 8467. The Acting Deputy Attorney General reached that conclusion after learning, among other things, that as a result of these proceedings, Adams has been denied access to sensitive information that the Acting Deputy Attorney General believes is necessary for Adams to govern and to help protect the City.

Judge Dale Ho repeatedly asked Emil Bove about his claim that the long-standing prosecution against Eric Adams constituted election interference (as well as about the claim it interfered with his ability to carry out his duties).

THE COURT: OK. There is also a reference, I think, in the paragraph to interference with the 2025 mayoral election. I have a similar question here, and it’s whether or not that’s a representation about the purpose or the effect of the prosecution or both?

MR. BOVE: I mean, frankly, I think the fact that Mayor Adams is sitting to my left right now is part of the problem. He’s not able to be out running the City and campaigning. I think that is actual interference with the election.

THE COURT: It’s having that effect.

MR. BOVE: Correct. I think the pendency of this motion right now has that effect.

THE COURT: OK.

[snip]

THE COURT: My understanding of that rationale is that it arises from a defendant’s status as a candidate. That it’s because, at least that portion about election interference, I mean, it’s because the defendant in this case is a candidate for office, not because he’s a public official. So, in other words, that rationale could apply to a candidate who’s not a public official?

MR. BOVE: Correct.

THE COURT: And it wouldn’t apply to a public official who’s not a candidate, so an unelected public official or a retiring public official or retired public official wouldn’t apply, the election interference component of what you’re applying to?

MR. BOVE: It applies to candidates. [my emphasis]

“I think that is actual interference with the election,” a (still) top-ranking DOJ official told a Federal judge about a prosecution of one of the candidates in the NYC primary for Mayor.

And then, four months later, Federal agents detained one of his opponents, after the election had already started (to say nothing of interfering with his ability to govern).

By Emil Bove’s standards, Kristi Noem’s goons just violated the law.

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