A D.O.J. Whistleblower Speaks Out

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From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the daily.

An explosive whistleblower report claims that the Justice Department is asking government lawyers to lie to the courts, and that that has forced career officials to choose between upholding the Constitution or pledging loyalty to the president.

Today, I speak to that whistleblower.

It's Wednesday, July 23rd.

Eras Rouveni, welcome to The Daily.

Nice to meet you.

I spoke to Eras Rouveni, the whistleblower, on Monday.

I'm very curious how you feel being with us today.

Well, I mean, I didn't have this on my life bingo card, but I'm happy to be here and happy to tell my story and happy that you all want to hear it.

In 2010, Rouveni joined the Justice Department's Office of Immigration Litigation, where he worked until he was fired in April of this year.

And then in June, he filed a whistleblower complaint that alleges he was, quote, thwarted, threatened, fired, and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court because his clients engaged in unlawful activity, abused their authority, created substantial and specific threat to health and safety, and because the pattern of this conduct continues to this day.

Look, I've been a DOJ attorney for 15 years, and the things that I experienced in that three-week window from March 14th to April 5th when I was suspended

are unprecedented.

I've never seen anything like it.

His whistleblower complaint focuses on directives he got from senior political appointees at the Justice Department, including from Emil Bovie,

who before joining the DOJ was President Trump's personal lawyer.

So I've come forward because

the

Trump administration has put put civil servants in this impossible position of fealty to the president and the agenda or fealty to uphold the Constitution and to uphold the rule of law.

And time and time again during those three weeks, I was put to the question, which side am I going to be on?

And ultimately, I mean, I didn't sign up to lie to a court.

And that's the position I was put in.

And that's the position others are being put in.

And that's why I've come forward.

It also sounds like, if I'm kind of hearing you correctly and reading between the lines a little bit, that like you have an image of what the DOJ is supposed to be.

And maybe to start, can you just talk about why and how you end up at the Justice Department to begin with?

Sure.

I mean, I was at a law firm in San Francisco for a couple of years after clerking for two federal judges.

And that was never the end game.

I went there just because the money paid well.

I wanted to live in San Francisco for a brief period of time, but I always wanted to get into public service.

And the key marketplace to do that, everyone understood at the time, and I still until recently felt this way, was the Department of Justice.

Because right away, you are leading big cases.

You're standing up in court.

You're saying, Eras Rouveney, on behalf of the United States.

You're not necessarily saying, Eras Rouveni on behalf of some large, faceless corporation.

You're here really representing the people of the United States.

And the thing that I've always thought about when trying to explain this is there's this Supreme Court case from 1935 in which the Supreme court tells you what it is to be a government lawyer and the role of the government attorney the supreme court writes is not simply to win it's to make sure justice is done and that's that's the thrill of standing up in court and saying your name on behalf of the united states you sound i just want to point out idealistic it sounds like that's why you went to the doj i think that'd be fair to say when you first joined the justice department Did it feel like what you thought being a DOJ attorney would feel like?

Like, did it feel like the job was living up to the idealistic vision that you had or your ethical expectations?

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it's not true specific or uniquely to the Obama administration.

It's true, even of the first Trump administration, the Biden administration.

When you got a court order, you followed it.

So let's fast forward to the first Trump administration.

Can you tell us about some of the immigration cases you worked on during the first administration?

Sure.

I think the

most high-profile one would have been the first one, the travel ban that sort of issued January 27th, 2017.

That occupied the first few months, frankly, of the Trump administration in the immigration space.

And I can recall working 100-hour weeks defending it in January and February of that year.

This was the travel ban that was colloquially known as the Muslim ban?

That's right.

How did it feel to defend that?

Because obviously that was an extremely controversial case.

Did you have any concerns representing the government on that issue?

So at that time, no.

At that time, I did not have concerns because if we got a court order, as I did, which said you may not apply the travel ban in the state of Virginia, we complied with it.

And if we didn't like it, we appealed.

You were comfortable doing whatever was within the limits of your abilities and the limits of the law.

I mean, that's part of being a government lawyer.

You may not like everything you defend, but you're still there working with the client to do something within the confines of the law.

And the client here would have been the Department of Homeland Security and state.

Just to put a really fine point on it, we know from some of our colleagues reporting that in the first term, the administration was frustrated with attorneys who they saw as standing in their way, particularly on issues of immigration.

It does not sound like that you were that type of lawyer.

You are not somebody who is pushing back against the Trump administration because you may have political or personal opposition to the policies.

You were doing your job.

You worked within the confines of what was legal.

And that is what matters.

Yeah, that's right.

I mean, the Trump administration promoted me and gave me three awards, if I recall correctly, during the first Trump administration for work I've done defending the very policies we're just talking about now, including the travel ban.

So I'm there to do my job as a government attorney.

I may not personally agree or disagree with everything I'm defending, regardless of who's the president, but the job is to defend vigorously the administration's goals within the confines of the law.

Coming up to the 2024 election,

The Trump campaign made it very clear that a second Trump administration was going to be much more aggressive about immigration.

And I wonder how you interpreted that.

Like, what did you think and what were you expecting?

Having led litigation during the first Trump administration and seen sort of

how that unfolded, I think we, and this may be my personal thought.

I don't want to put this view in anyone else's head, but we thought it'd be less chaotic.

Like they've done this already.

They sort of maybe have a better.

handle on how to put out policy that survives the courts.

We thought they would be more orderly compared to the first Trump administration.

So when President Trump's second term actually begins, you do start to grow more concerned about how the administration is enacting on this immigration agenda.

So take me to the first moment when you started to feel that concern.

What exactly happened and why did it bother you?

Yeah, this, I think, is March 14th of this year.

And this is the same day where I am informed that I will soon be promoted to the acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation, which means I would essentially be the person overseeing all the district court litigation.

Basically, the buck stops with me on quality control for anything going through the district courts.

So, that same day that I'm told that I am going to serve in this role, I am summoned with very little context to a meeting in the Deputy Attorney General's conference room, along with Drew Ensign, the political in charge of immigration litigation, and my supervisor, who at the time was the acting director.

So at this meeting we are told by Emil Bovi who is running the meeting the president was going to sign a proclamation invoking a rarely used

1798 wartime law the Alien Enemies Act and that planes containing individuals subject to this proclamation, Venezuelan nationals alleged to be members of the Tren Daragua gang were going to take off that weekend.

This This was a surprise.

I mean, we had heard Stephen Miller and folks he was associated with in 2024 talk about the Alien Enemies Act.

And so we were vaguely aware that this might be something at some point they would implement.

But the key thing here, this is the important part of why this is so unusual, is this is a wartime law.

It's only been invoked three times in the nation's history.

It's never been invoked when there isn't a state of war.

And in the normal course, even in the first Trump administration, the way one implements a somewhat aggressive reading of the law is you sit down with the lawyers, you come up with the best way to roll this out in the courts, you don't make the rollout operationally chaotic.

None of that happened here.

And so we have no context at this meeting for what we're about to hear, what the plan is, like how it's going to be implemented.

And no one asks our opinion either.

Nobody seems to care our thoughts on how to defend this or if it's defensible.

What happens after that?

Tell us what they instruct you to do.

So

Vovi, who again is leading the meeting, tells everyone in attendance that

this invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to remove certain Venezuelan nationals is of the highest importance to the White House.

And

after a pause, emphasizing to everyone again in the room, those planes have to take off, quote, no matter what.

And then there's another pause there.

And then this is the thing that sets the tone for the next three weeks.

Bovie says,

and if some court were to issue some order that prevents that from happening, we would have to consider telling that court, quote, fuck you.

What were you thinking in that moment when he said that?

I felt like a grenade had gone off.

Like, this is, is he serious?

It wasn't clear to me if it was just

acting or bravado, chest thumping.

Like, it was crazy.

And after a very long pause,

my immediate supervisor says, well, if we get an order, we would advise our clients to follow the order.

And after that, we were ushered out of the conference room very quickly.

The meeting ended shortly after that.

Just to lay out super clearly why this took you aback so much

is that lawyers do not regularly say F you to the courts, right?

Like, like abiding by a court order is the biggest, brightest red line.

Yeah,

we get court orders that are bad for the goals of whoever is in the White House all the time.

But the normal thing you do is you follow the order, unless and until you get it reversed on appeal or stayed by a higher court.

You don't just preemptively announce, yeah, we're just not going to follow that one.

It was highly unusual.

I'd never heard anything like it in my 15 years.

Did you think walking out of that meeting, that was probably just bluster.

We're not actually going to be asked to do that.

Once my supervisor spoke up to say, well, no, we would advise our clients to follow court orders.

Yeah, I felt a little bit better about it.

I felt that, okay, this is not something we need to worry about.

What happened after that?

So the attorneys from the ACLU file a lawsuit that I become aware of at 7.30 the next day.

So by that morning, Judge Boesberg had issued a TRO.

The judge in this case.

Yes,

which is a temporary restraining order.

And so as was telegraphed at the meeting the day before, we know that we're going to be spending our weekend defending this Alien Enemies Act operation, and we're going to be in court on Saturday.

And there was a hearing set for 4 p.m.

Later that day.

That hearing got moved to 5,

and then we appeared at that hearing.

And by we, I mean Drew Ensign.

Drew Ensign handled the argument for the government.

And now,

just to sidebar here for a second, Ensign was at the same meeting I was at.

And he heard the same things that I heard from Mr.

Bovey, including that planes are taking off over the weekend and that they need to take off no matter what, and this is the highest priority of the White House.

So Posberg asks him, are there any planes taking off?

And he says, I don't know.

I believe that

to not be a plausible answer from someone.

in Mr.

Ensign's position since he was at the same meeting as me.

You think he lied?

I believe he lied.

I don't see how he could have come away from that meeting with the impression that no planes were taking off over the next 24 to 48 hours.

And that's sort of the first operationalization, if you will, of the FU.

So here we have the political head of the immigration section telling the court, I don't know.

What was your reaction when you heard your colleague, as you put it, lying to a judge?

Oh, shit.

How can he say that?

That's just not true.

Wow.

So at this point, you've seen your colleagues do behavior that you find highly objectionable, it sounds like.

At what point do you actually get involved?

Well,

I'm talking to my immediate supervisor in real time as this is happening the evening of March 15th, and I'm banging the drum of

this is not right.

We're lying potentially to the court.

And the following day, we get this email from the acting assistant attorney general who tells us that the decision has been made by Bovey to essentially, I'm paraphrasing, to ignore this order that Bozberg issued to not let those people off those planes.

And that Bovey had said, no.

That's not an order we need to follow, let those people off the planes.

And then on Twitter, you can see like this, this video where they just hand these individuals over to the El Salvadoran authorities and transfer them to Seacot, the maximum security prison.

And that's when we really did tell the Court F you really sunk in because now these folks are in Salvadoran custody at a maximum security prison.

And so we are all just stunned that we have

had any participation in what has just happened.

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So, what's the next thing that happens that concerns you just as far as telling the truth to the judge, obeying court orders, etc.?

Yeah, so fast forward to March 28th, and there's a second case.

A judge issues an order forbidding the government from removing individuals to third countries, countries that they're not from, without following certain minimal process beforehand.

And very quickly, a new facet of the FU makes an appearance here.

So

normally, one of the roles of DOJ, regardless of what the subject matter is, if we get an adverse court order, we work with the agency to draft language informing the non-lawyers within the agency about what they are now allowed or not allowed to do vis-a-vis this policy.

So that everybody can follow the law.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That's a key part of the job because otherwise you take ICE officers, for example.

If they remove somebody that the court has said it's illegal to do that, now that's them on the line potentially in some sort of lawsuit with financial damages attached to it.

So it's our job as lawyers to protect these law enforcement officers when there's an order out there saying, don't do this thing because this will be illegal if you do it.

And the key FU move here was we were forbidden from working with DHS to circulate guidance about this injunction.

Just it was, this was just, I'd never seen this before.

Just we're not going to send out any guidance.

Stop putting things in writing about this injunction.

And that weekend, after this injunction issued, another flight took off, depositing 17 more individuals in Salvadoran custody at Seacot.

And you think, just to be clear here, you think that ICE was deliberately kept in the dark so that those flights could take off, like so that they didn't know that they weren't supposed to do that.

100%.

And this also allows someone who's a decision maker to stick their head in the sand and say, la, la, la, I don't, I don't know what's happening here.

And so I didn't violate an order.

I didn't know about it.

That's why I was told to stop putting questions in writing about the injunction, I believe.

Because if there's no paper trail, it makes that denial more plausible.

What is the next plot point in you feeling like you're unable to do your job because of some of the directions that you're getting from your bosses?

Yeah, this is when we get to the third case, the Obrego Garcia case.

This is the Maryland father who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

Yes, that's right.

So when I first got this case on my radar, I don't really think it's going to be the thing it turned into because this is a single individual who everyone agrees was wrongly removed to El Salvador when you had an order saying you cannot remove him to El Salvador because he faces persecution or torture there.

And the government's a big entity, it makes mistakes.

People get removed by mistake and have throughout my time at DOJ, regardless of who the administration is, and we always bring them back.

So I immediately reach out to the clients.

In this case, that's Homeland Security and state.

and tee up the possibility of bringing him back and just making this case go away.

But then come March 31st, we have a brief due in that case to articulate our position to the judge.

And kind of out of nowhere, James Percival, who is a senior counselor to the Secretary, Homeland Security, Secretary Noam, sends an email to the group.

And this is DOJ attorneys, Department of State attorneys, Department of Homeland Security attorneys,

asking if we can essentially call Mr.

Abrego Garcia some sort of MS-13 leader.

A gang leader.

Yeah, that Abrego Garcia is some sort of Kaiser Sosa, some secret MS-13 mastermind.

And none of us had seen any evidence of that to date, even though we'd asked for it, because the position that the administration is advancing in the press, what the press secretary and others are saying publicly, is this guy's uh MS-13 mastermind, a very dangerous individual, a terrorist.

And so that's all happening in public.

The crux of the email, if I'm calling it correctly, is that by calling this individual a leader of a transnational gang, if he's a very bad actor, well, who cares that we removed him incorrectly?

But then I was unable to corroborate the things Percival wanted to say to the court in a declaration because there's no evidence for it whatsoever.

So, what happens next?

So,

we file the brief, and then on April 1st, I get this very

ominous call

in which it is conveyed to me that Mr.

Bovey is very unhappy with a number of things, including this brief that had stated that Mr.

Obrego Garcia was removed by mistake.

He didn't like that you had admitted to that.

He didn't like that the U.S.

government had admitted to that.

That brief was a brief reviewed by many attorneys within DOJ and DHS.

But yeah, he did not like that this brief stated that it was a mistake to remove.

Mr.

Obrego Garcia.

And then in that same phone call, I'm directed to cease asking any further questions related to bringing Mr.

Obrego Garcia back, about his safety in Seacot.

So I was told to stop asking questions about that as well and just go to court on the 4th and make threshold jurisdictional arguments, meaning that the court has no authority to do anything because this person is outside the United States and beyond the control or custody of the U.S.

government.

So I go to court.

And the judge asked me, among other things, do you can see that it was error to remove Mr.

Obrego Garcia?

I, of course, have no choice but to say yes.

Saying anything but that would have been a lie.

So the hearing ends.

And right away, my phone is sort of blowing up.

Calls coming in, in particular from the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of immigration litigation.

And so just because he's my boss's boss.

And he asks me, why did I not argue that Obrego was a terrorist at that argument?

It's not something we argued in our legal papers, and it's not something supported by the facts.

So that's why that didn't come out of my mouth.

So he hangs up, calls back again a few minutes later, asks the same question, says, the White House wants to know why you didn't argue that Mr.

Obrego Garcia is a terrorist.

I have the same answers.

And very soon afterwards, we get a brief, an outline of a brief that basically makes these arguments that he's a terrorist, that he's a dangerous MS-13 individual.

And this to me was the third key example of the FU because

we are now at a point where we've admitted we did something wrong, the government, but instead of fixing it, we're just making stuff up about this person and signing a brief under penalty of perjury that we are submitting to the court.

And so when that draft brief comes around, that's the line because that's us lying to a court and that's me signing my name to that lie.

And that is not something I signed up to do when I joined DOJ or frankly, any attorney should be doing at all on behalf of any client.

So I immediately raise red flags and they take out the argument and they move it to a different section of the brief as though I wouldn't notice.

And they're still making the argument just in a different section.

Like just copy and pasting.

Yeah, they just moved it elsewhere to make to come in a different order in the brief.

And I'm like, guys, no,

this is still not true.

This is still a lie.

I can't sign this.

And this leads to this sort of dramatic, last-minute, late-in-the-night conversation with my immediate supervisor.

It's about 1:30 a.m.

We're talking.

It's an uncomfortable conversation because we both understand, in some way, in our minds, that if I don't sign this brief, it's unclear that I'm employed next Monday.

Really?

And he's thinking of it as, don't do this.

This is not worth it.

This is not the hill to die on.

He's also thinking of it as he can't lose a senior litigator like myself,

given all the crazy in this period of time.

So he says to me, you signed up to do this.

You asked for this job.

This is the job, something to that effect.

And that's when I say, I didn't sign up to lie.

And that's the end of the conversation.

He then files the brief with the information that I objected to.

He signs it.

And then the following day, around 10, 12 in the morning, I get an email that I've been put on administrative leave for failure to follow an order, failure to advocate on behalf of my clients.

And once that letter was sent to me, it was pretty clear that that second letter actually firing me was coming.

How exactly did you find out that you were being fired?

So, in a bit of

good timing on my part, I was not in the United States when that happened.

I had a long planned vacation.

I was in Portugal, and I got an email informing me that under Article II of the United States Constitution, I am being removed from federal service.

And that's it.

What did that moment feel like getting that email saying that you were fired after all of those years working at the Justice Department as somebody that came to the Justice Department for, as you had said, pretty idealistic reasons?

I mean, it was devastating.

I mean,

I handled it as best that I could.

I didn't want to, you know, ruin the vacation that my family was having, but it was devastating.

This was, you you know 15 years of my life

i thought i would retire from federal service 15 years from now like i thought i would be a lifer i built myself up i'd risen through the ranks i had i really loved the job did you hear from colleagues what did they say to you about it yeah i heard from a lot of colleagues um a lot a lot a lot it was just stunning like everyone was just shocked and this is really the important point in all of this it's pretty clear they fired me as a warning shot to the DOJ, to the civil division in particular.

Here's Eras Rouveney.

Here's a guy who defended everything in the first Trump administration.

Here's a guy that nobody thinks is some kind of partisan actor.

And we're going to fire him.

And if you guys want to follow in his footsteps and, you know, not play ball, not, you know, pick loyalty to the president's agenda over your duty of candidate to the courts, we'll fire you too.

We'll take away your livelihood.

We'll put you in the possible position of choosing ethics or a salary.

The next big step that you take, of course, is filing this whistleblower report.

And a lot of people might be aware that being a whistleblower comes with certain legal protections.

It's an actual classification.

But there are, of course, risks.

Can you talk a little bit about how you were assessing the risks of filing this report when you did it?

I mean, I felt.

I felt it very important for me to tell my story through the proper whistleblower channels, given given what is happening to DOJ.

So yeah, are there risks?

Sure.

I'm not naive that I've put a target on me.

And

that sucks.

But this story, what's happened to DOJ, what they're doing to career civil service is so important to me that I think the risks are worth it.

But what are you afraid?

Well, I'll give you an example.

was watching some news coverage about Obrego Garcia and a certain Trump administration talking head gets on the TV and floats the following possibility.

Anyone supporting Mr.

Obrego Garcia is aiding and abetting terrorism.

And that sent me to a dark place because it's not hard to connect the dots there.

Maybe they come after people like me on trumped up charges

or just find ways to make my life difficult.

I mean, they're smearing my name in the press.

They're saying negative things about me.

I'm getting attention that, you know, I never wanted to receive.

So

these risks are real.

But I sort of wonder if you think anything will actually change as a result of this, because what you're describing is not a situation where there are a few bad apples.

You are describing a situation where this F you to the courts is coming, it seems like, from the highest places in government.

And your bosses, instead of standing up to that, are willing to allow you to be fired for not lying to a judge.

So I guess what I'm saying is that it feels like the culture that you are objecting to is pretty entrenched.

And I sort of wonder what if anything could come of what you've done.

Yeah,

it's a fair question.

I don't know that this is necessarily something that

yields meaningful change at all in the foreseeable future.

That's entirely possible.

And that's something I

grappled with through this whole process.

Like, what if we did this and

nothing happened whatsoever?

But at the same time, you can't just think about the current moment and who's in charge now.

I have to believe someday someone else will be in charge, and maybe this will matter more then.

So, even if nothing changes now,

I have spoken up, I've documented the sort of degradations and deceptions that are occurring at the Department of Justice.

And part of what keeps it all going is, like I said before, like hundreds, literally of people, many I don't even know, have been reaching out since April 4th.

There is a groundswell of people that believe in the importance of this whistleblower complaint and what is happening to the Department of Justice.

And so everyone's got to make their own decision when they've reached that red line.

I reached mine on April 4th.

But respectfully, If what you are saying is true, you have attorneys who are being asked to violate the basic oath that they took and their ethical principles.

They're basically being asked to do something that no attorney should do.

So, what do you make of the fact that you are the only person to file a whistleblower report, and yet you are not the only person to have witnessed what you say you have witnessed?

Yeah,

I can't really speculate on other people's motives.

People may be in a different circumstance than me.

People have their own personal lives and decisions.

And so, I can't, I'm not out here suggesting that anyone who is still at DOJ

is somehow suspect or evil.

I am out here saying, however, that more and more of my colleagues I've heard are being put in these impossible positions.

And someone has to be the first.

But this is really a canary in the coal mine moment for the rule of law.

So again, I come back to my hope that others will see the moment and see what is right and speak up.

Do you think you'll ever work in government service again?

Like, do you think you could ever be idealistic the way that you were when you entered the DOJ about representing the government, given what you've seen?

Yes, absolutely.

It'll be hard.

It'll be a challenge, but the oath I took to uphold and defend the Constitution isn't an oath that I abide by only when it's easy or convenient.

So, yeah, absolutely.

I think that one day there will be a DOJ or government civil service writ large that I can be a part of again.

Just not now.

Eris Roubani, thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you.

In the weeks following Roubaney's firing from the Justice Department, President Trump nominated Emile Bovey to a lifetime federal judgeship.

In his confirmation hearing, Bovey denied the thrust of Roubaini's allegations in the whistleblower report, saying, quote, I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order.

But the Times has reported on text messages and emails that seem to confirm Roubaine's version of events.

Bovey is expected to be confirmed by the Senate in the coming days.

We'll be right back.

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Here's what else you need to note, though.

On Tuesday, the leadership of the U.S.

Attorney's Office in New Jersey was thrown into confusion after top Justice Department officials overruled a panel of federal judges who were attempting to replace the state's acting U.S.

attorney.

That position is currently held by Alina Haba, a former personal lawyer for President Trump, whose limited term in the role was set to end soon.

The panel of federal judges has taken the rare step of blocking Haba's bid to stay in the role, instead choosing a different prosecutor for the job.

But the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, stepped in, firing that prosecutor.

It remains unclear whether the judges will be able to enforce their appointment.

And

Speaker Mike Johnson abruptly announced on Tuesday that he would shut down the House of Representatives, sending the chamber home early for the summer in order to avoid holding votes on releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

The House has become paralyzed over this issue, with Democrats trying to force a vote on releasing the files and Republicans divided over how to proceed.

Just last week, Speaker Johnson had said that the Epstein material needed to come out.

But by this week, he seemed to be deferring to President Trump, who has insisted that his party needs to move on from Epstein.

Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko and Anna Foley with help from Sidney Harper.

It was edited by Rachel Quester and Paige Cowett, fact-checked by Caitlin Love, contains original music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker, and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

Special thanks to Devlyn Barrett and Margaret Ho.

That's it for the daily.

I'm Rachel Abrams.

See you tomorrow.

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