Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg this week pushed forward his fact-finding inquiry into whether Justice Department officials under the Trump administration deliberately defied his emergency order blocking the removal of more than one hundred Venezuelan detainees to El Salvador earlier this year.
Boasberg on Monday summoned former DOJ attorney-turned-leaker Erez Reuveni to testify next week on Dec. 15, saying the government’s recent declarations offer scant details about why the judge’s March instruction to halt the flights was allegedly ignored. Republican allies of President Donald Trump reacted in outrage to Boasberg’s latest move in the monthslong contempt inquiry that Boasberg has pushed since the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March to deport illegal alien criminals with associations to the transnational gang Tren de Aragua.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who called on the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to suspend Boasberg from his duties after Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) introduced articles of impeachment for the judge, said the judge’s continued pursuit of evidence to support contempt “is making mockery of our judiciary.”
“Rogue Judge Boasberg is holding sham ‘contempt’ proceedings for a case the Supreme Court said he had no jurisdiction over,” Schmitt posted to X on Monday. “This is outrageous and he must be immediately SUSPENDED pending his impeachment inquiry.”
Boasberg stressed that it remains “premature” for him to recommend criminal prosecution of top administration officials such as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, after she revealed last month that she was the official who directed the Venezuelan detainees to be delivered to Salvadoran authorities based on advice from senior DOJ lawyers. Boasberg also summoned Drew Ensign, the DOJ lawyer who received his order that “any plane containing these folks” needed to be returned to the United States, to appear for testimony the day after Reuveni.
Boasberg’s escalation comes only weeks after the full D.C. Circuit left in place an August ruling from a three-judge appeals court panel that had erased Boasberg’s April finding of “probable cause” to hold administration officials in criminal contempt. A three-judge panel in August wiped away Boasberg’s initial finding, and then a re-hearing by the full court in November left that decision intact.
However, the appeals court’s majority opinion made clear that Boasberg is permitted to continue gathering facts about who directed the alleged defiance of his order.
“The district court remains free to require the government to identify the decision makers who directed the potentially contemptuous actions and to carefully consider next steps,” three appeals court judges wrote in a statement accompanying the November decision.
Judge Florence Pan, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, defended Boasberg’s decision to open an investigation, saying he “did nothing wrong” by investigating whether DOJ personnel intentionally violated his order. She accused her colleagues of disrupting a constitutional check on executive power, citing Trump’s attacks on Boasberg — including calls for Boasberg’s impeachment that drew a rare public response from Chief Justice John Roberts in March.
“We cannot overlook that, in response to this very case, the President of the United States called for the district judge’s impeachment,” Pan wrote, warning that leaving the appeals court panel ruling untouched risks signaling to government officials that defying court orders carries little consequence.
The core of the dispute dates back to March 15, when Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport nearly 140 Venezuelan men that the Department of Homeland Security found to be members of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua. They were rounded up, put on planes, and flown toward El Salvador. When lawyers for the men raced to court, Boasberg issued an emergency order requiring the planes to turn around while deportation planes were already in the air. The men were handed over to the Salvadoran government and held for months at its Terrorism Confinement Center before being transferred to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange.
Boasberg concluded in mid-April that the government showed a “willful disregard” for his order, but the appellate panel vacated that finding in August on jurisdictional grounds tied to the underlying lawsuit, which was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Reuveni has alleged that senior officials had already decided to ignore whatever Boasberg might order on March 14, a key allegation that is highly disputed by the government.
In a June report to Congress, he accused former Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove of telling DOJ lawyers the day before Boasberg’s ruling that the flights needed to leave “no matter what,” even musing that the department might have to tell the courts “f*** you.” Bove denied the allegation, calling it a combination of “falsehoods” and “distortions,” and has since been elevated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
Last month, plaintiffs attorneys represented by the ACLU even placed Bove on a list of names for potential witness testimony for the inquiry. Bove, now a sitting judge, submitted a declaration as a “non-party” to the court docket on Monday, saying he provided privileged legal advice to Noem, DHS General Counsel Joseph Mazzara, and Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche the day that the criminal aliens were deported to El Salvador.
Reuveni said he was placed on paid leave in April after telling another federal judge that Kilmar Abrego Garcia had been deported because of an “administrative error,” a disclosure that sharply contradicted the DOJ’s prior representations in that case. Court filings later revealed he was ousted from the department in June.
Reuveni has been supported by groups including Justice Connection, a network largely composed of DOJ personnel fired under the Trump administration, with backing from the Government Accountability Project, which has in the past received over $1 million in donor support from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Washington Examiner previously reported.
Shortly before Bove’s July 29 confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) raised concerns about the timing of Reuveni’s comments about Bove being reported in the New York Times, arguing his staff had made numerous attempts to verify the whistleblower’s claims but were “stonewalled” by Reuveni’s lawyers.
BOASBERG RESUMES CONTEMPT INQUIRY IN TRUMP ALIEN ENEMIES ACT DEPORTATION CASE
Boasberg has made clear that any final contempt referral remains on the table. If the DOJ refuses to prosecute any referral, he has said he maintains the authority to appoint an outside lawyer.
While the Supreme Court ultimately voided his original restraining order for lack of jurisdiction on April 7, Boasberg has said that defiance of a court order is punishable even if a higher court later undercuts the underlying case.
