10/19/2025: The Dealmakers, Erez Reuveni, Amy Sherald

0:06Tonight, President Trump's handpicked dealmakers take us inside the negotiations between Israel and Hamas that led to a breakthrough in one of the world's most intractable conflicts. I heard the president asked you what the chances were for success. Yes. And you said? 100 percent. And he said, why do you feel so confident? Yeah. And I said, well, we can't afford to fail. I felt like a bomb had gone off. Eris Ruvaini won awards as a government attorney in the first Trump administration. Now he's been fired. He says, for standing up to lawlessness in the Department of Justice. There was a pattern and practice at the direction of DOJ leadership to ignore court orders and, worst of all, to lie.

1:01Amy Sherald's paintings have sold for as much as$4 million and are often compared to work by the great masters of American realism. Does that make sense to you in any way? It's technically what I wanted as a black woman artist, American, for people to be like, yeah, Amy Sherrill, Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper. Like, I'm in the room with the guys. And so I think I'm OK with it. Yeah, I think I'm OK. Not a bad room to be in. No. Yeah. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories and in our last minute, the mentalist on people's minds.

1:45Tonight on 60 Minutes.

2:10can change something without introducing fragility or having to pay a developer. We're Thirsty Turtle, and we leveled up our business with Shopify. Start your free trial at shopify.com slash au. It's less than a week since the release of the remaining living Israeli hostages, and the deal between Israel and Hamas is already being tested, with Israel carrying out airstrikes after accusing Hamas of violating the ceasefire. That a ceasefire had been reached at all was a big surprise. It followed months of failed attempts to end the two-year war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas's October 7th attack. The breakthrough came after President Trump deputized not two diplomats to move the negotiations along, but two businessmen.

3:03One, a close friend, Steve Witkoff. The other, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. dealmakers who came up through the world of New York real estate. I heard the president asked you what the chances were for success. Yes. And you said? 100%. And he said, why do you feel so confident? Yeah. And I said, well, we can't afford to fail. We just kept on thinking to ourselves, this finish line, this finish line is about saving lives. Yes. Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner got to that finish line, they say, using the intensely personal techniques of real estate dealmakers, dangling presidential promises, protections, or punishments to get Israel and Hamas to agree.

3:49We wanted the hostages to come out. We wanted a real ceasefire that both sides would respect. We needed a way to bring humanitarian aid into the people. And then we had to write all these complex words to deal with the 50 years of stupid word games that everyone in that region is so used to playing. Both sides wanted the objective, and we just need to find a way to help everyone get there. Early September, Kushner, Whitcoff, and negotiators from the Middle East were making headway on a ceasefire hostage deal when suddenly things went up in smoke. Israel fired missiles into Qatar to assassinate Hamas' leadership.

4:27Six people were killed, including the son of Khalil al-Hayah, Hamas' top negotiator. We woke up the next morning to find out that there had been this attack. Wow. And of course I was called by the president. You had no idea, obviously. None whatsoever. You know, I think both Jared and I felt, I just feel we felt a little bit betrayed. Now I had heard that the president, that he was furious. I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control. in what they were doing and that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests.

5:15People should understand that Netanyahu, the Israelis, bombed the peacemakers, bombed the negotiating team. And by the way, Leslie, it had a metastasizing effect because the Qataris were critical to the negotiation, as were the Egyptians and the Turks, and we had lost the confidence of the Qataris. And so Hamas went underground and it was very, very difficult to get to them. And they were your link to Hamas. Absolutely. You were dealing through the Qataris to make your proposals to Hamas. And it became very, very evident as to how important and how critical that role was. But there was something that happened that brought the Qataris back in And that was this phone call that I think President Trump actually forced Netanyahu to make to the Qataris.

6:08I wouldn't call it forced. You wouldn't? No, I would say that I would... He's becoming a diplomat. Clearly. Whether the president himself knew of the attack in advance or not, he wanted Netanyahu to apologize to the Qataris. The apology needed to happen. It just did. We were not moving forward without that apology. And the president said to him, people apologize. And so on September 29th, the president held the phone while Netanyahu read a scripted apology from the Oval Office. Mr. Trump was now directly engaged. He gave Qatar a new security guarantee and introduced his own peace plan, calling for an immediate ceasefire and release of all remaining Israeli hostages all at once.

7:02The notion was to convince everybody that those 20 Israeli hostages who were alive were no longer assets for Hamas. They were a liability. How did they become a liability and not their sort of bargaining chip? What did Hamas gain by keeping these hostages? You had tens of thousands of Palestinians who were killed in these wars. You have half of Gaza, or more than half of it, is absolutely destroyed. And so what's been the gain? But Hamas was still reluctant. Hamas' worst nightmare in the deal would be that Israel withdrew to the agreed-upon line. Hamas released all the hostages. And then once that occurred, Israel just resumed the war and went back to going after them.

7:45To reassure Hamas, President Trump gave Kushner and Whitcoff permission to talk directly with the terrorists. a big break with diplomatic protocol. On October 8th, the two landed in Egypt to deliver a message from President Trump to al-Hayah, Hamas's top negotiator. The president said, we will stand behind this deal. We will not allow the terms of this deal for any party to be violated. And both sides will be treated fairly. And both sides will be treated fairly. So we got into the room. The lead negotiator was sitting right next to me. That negotiator was in Doha when the Israelis struck. Correct.

8:26He survived, but his son was killed. Is that right? That's right. And we expressed our condolences to him for the loss of his son. He mentioned it. And I told him that I had lost a son and that we were both members of a really bad club, parents who had buried children. Whitcoff's son, Andrew, died of an opioid overdose at the age of 22. When Steve and him spoke about their sons, it turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two human beings kind of showing a vulnerability with each other. Is it true that once the deal was agreed to, that the Israelis there at that meeting and the Qataris began to hug each other?

9:10Absolutely. And I thought to myself, I wish the world could have seen it. The deal allowed members of Hamas to stay in Gaza and called on Israel to release nearly 2 ,000 Palestinians, including some convicted terrorists. Once the ceasefire went into effect, Hamas was given 72 hours to free the Israeli hostages. Kushner and Witkoff waited nervously. So, you decide to go to Gaza. And what did you see? It looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area. And then you see these people moving back, and I asked the idea, where are they going? Like, I'm looking around, these are all ruins.

9:51And they said, well, they're going back to the areas where their destroyed home was, onto their plot, and they're going to pitch a tent. And it's very sad, because you think to yourself, they really have nowhere else to go. Would you say now, having been there, that it was genocide? No. No. Absolutely not. No. No, there was a war being fought. So that very night, you go to Hostage Square, where the families of the hostages have been protesting, mourning, being very frustrated, angry sometimes. And every time you mention President Trump... To President Donald J. Trump. I had to stop because they were cheering.

10:31Thank you, Trump! Thank you, Trump! But then you tried to thank Netanyahu and... Yeah. To Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

10:46Every time you said his name, they booed. Look, that's how they feel. I don't feel that way. And I thought he steered his country through some really difficult circumstances. People think that he prolonged the incarceration of the hostages for his own political future. Yeah, I don't think that's the case. October 7th for me was a shattering day. Since then, my heart has not been complete. But then Kushner brought up the Gazans. To see the suffering end for the people in Gaza, who, for most of them, were experiencing this through no fault of their own. The biggest message that we've tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now is that now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better.

11:39How are you doing with that message? We're just getting started. How sure are you that what you've accomplished so far is going to stick? First of all, it's the Middle East, so everyone complains about everything. One worrisome issue, whether Hamas is dragging its feet in returning the remains of deceased Israeli hostages. Are you saying publicly right now that Hamas is acting in good faith, seriously looking for the body? As far as we've seen from what's being conveyed to us from the mediators, they are so far. That could break down at any minute, but right now we have seen them looking to honor their agreement.

12:18Another flashpoint, the number of trucks Israel is allowing to enter Gaza with desperately needed food, medicine, and other aid. Then there are several issues that were kicked down the road, left unresolved. Like the extent of Israeli troop withdrawal, the need to establish an international peacekeeping mechanism, a functional government in Gaza, and most urgently, when and how Hamas will disarm. Hamas now is using weapons to execute people that they perceive as their enemies in Gaza. And they're also using their weapons to reestablish themselves as the entity that is governing Gaza. They're moving into the vacuum.

13:05Hamas right now is doing exactly what you would expect a terrorist organization to do, which is to try to reconstitute and take back their positions. Right. The success or failure of this will be if Israel and this international mechanism is able to create a viable alternative. If they are successful, Hamas will fail and Gaza will not be a threat to Israel in the future. The eventual rebuilding of Gaza will be a monumental project. That the two businessmen running the negotiations have deep financial ties in the Middle East, specifically in Qatar, has raised ethical concerns. So you have both done a lot of business with the Gulf states, billions and billions of dollars worth of business.

13:50And you've done some of the business, wow, this negotiation has gone on. And that has raised some issues of conflict. I mean, some blurring of a line between, you know, what you're doing in terms of foreign policy and benefiting financially from what's going on. So first of all, Leslie, nobody's pointed out any instances where Steve or I have pursued any policies or done anything that have not been in the interests of America. But the perception? But, Leslie, we can't spend our time focused on perception as much as we have to focus on the facts. We're here to do good. These are impossible tasks.

14:30And because this is important, I've volunteered my time to help the president and Steve try to make progress. But Steve nor I will be involved in awarding contracts or figuring out who does business, you know, in Gaza after. Well, from my standpoint, Leslie, I'm not in business anymore. Yeah, but your family is. But I've divested. Like Jared, I receive no salary and I pay all my own expenses. This has become an issue. What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world. If Steve and I didn't have these deep relationships, the deal that we were able to help get done that freed these hostages would not have occurred.

15:15This past Monday, the Israeli hostages, all 20, were home in Israel. Families marveling with joy, disbelief, emotions so deep it hurt. Steve, how were you feeling when they come up? Elated. Elated. And I was thinking to myself, what would I have felt like when I got the call from Cedars-Sinai Hospital that my son had died if the call from them was, he didn't die. Oh, God. We revived him. And these people were all getting that type of call. Their kids were coming home. But less than a week after their return, the ceasefire is under strain and the dealmakers are back in the region trying to keep things from unraveling.

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16:47Eris Ruvaini was on his way up. He was an attorney in the Department of Justice who was so effective defending President Trump's first-term immigration policy that he was promoted right away in Trump's second term. But Ruvani's 15-year Justice Department career ended suddenly after he says he witnessed government lawyers lying in court and evading orders of a judge. These last few months have been a time of upheaval in the Justice Department. Now, Ruvaini's claims are raising concern in courtrooms across the country. The administration has called Ruvaini a leaker, seeking five minutes of fame.

17:31But in his first television interview, Eris Ruvaini told us he's paid a price. Speaking up cost him his dream. Even before I went to law school, I understood what I wanted to do as a lawyer was to be involved in public service. and everyone understood at the time you do it at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. There's no better place as a young attorney to just do the sorts of cases where you're standing up in court as a first chair attorney on behalf of the United States doing things that law firm partners don't do. And that meant what to you? That meant I was there on behalf of the American people, on behalf of the millions of citizens of this country to make sure that justice was done.

18:17Eris Ruvaini started in 2010 as a so-called career attorney. Most lawyers at the Justice Department stay for years, even decades, defending the policies of one president after another. Ruvaini specialized in immigration law, and in the first Trump term, he defended the controversial ban on travelers from Muslim countries, among many other cases. I was promoted. I received three awards for defense of fairly high-profile litigation. I defended everything they put on my plate. That was my job. And at the beginning of the second Trump administration, you were promoted again. That's right. Very soon into the administration, I was selected to be the acting deputy director of the immigration section, overseeing about 100 attorneys and every case that arose in the federal district courts.

19:12But it was the very day of that promotion, Friday, March 14th, that he and others were called to a fateful meeting with Emil Bovey, President Trump's newly appointed number three at the Justice Department, who was once Trump's criminal defense attorney. And we were told at this meeting that over the weekend, the president of the United States would be signing a proclamation invoking something called the Alien Enemies Act. This is a wartime law from 1798 invoked three times in the nation's history during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. The Alien Enemies Act allows rapid expulsion from the U.S.

19:56of the citizens of enemy nations during a war. But without a declared war, Trump used it against more than 100 Venezuelans that the government said were terrorists. They were to be denied their right to be heard by a judge. Ruvani says Bovee expected a challenge. Bovee emphasized those planes need to take off no matter what. And then after a pause, he also told all in attendance, and if some court should issue an order preventing that, we may have to consider telling that court, f*** you. And when you heard that, you thought what? It felt like a bomb had gone off. Here is the number three official using expletives to tell career attorneys that we may just have to consider disregarding federal court orders.

20:51The next day, Saturday, lawyers for the prisoners sued. Judge James Boesberg called a hearing and asked government lawyer Drew Ensign whether the planes were leaving that weekend. And Ensign says to Boesberg, I don't know. Now, Ensign was at the same meeting that I was at the day before, where we were told in no uncertain terms that planes were taking off over the weekend, that those planes needed to take off no matter what. And he says, I don't know. Ruvaney says that moment in court was stunning. It is the highest, most egregious violation of a lawyer's code of ethics to mislead a court with intent.

21:37We don't know Enson's intent. It was during the hearing that the planes took off. The judge issued an order, and immediately, Ruvaney emailed the agencies involved. The judge specifically ordered us to not remove anyone and to return anyone in the air. But that didn't happen. Instead, more than five hours after Boesburg's order, the detainees and other prisoners arrived at a maximum security prison in El Salvador. And then it really hit me. It's like, we really did tell the courts, screw you. We really did just tell the courts, we don't care about your order. You can't tell us what to do. That was just a real gut punch.

22:29The Department of Justice has the responsibility to obey all court orders. It can disagree with the order. It can appeal it. It can ask the judge to reconsider. but while the order is in effect, it's the obligation of the department to see to it that the government complies. Peter Keisler should know. He ran the Justice Department as acting attorney general in 2007 for George W. Bush. He worked in Ronald Reagan's White House, and today he's part of a law firm representing federal workers fired by the administration. But some people watching this interview are thinking, if these people have been labeled by the administration as terrorists, as gang members, then we should get them out of the country as quickly as possible.

23:12And they're a lawful means to get people who are terrorists out of the country. Lawful means that Keisler says must include giving the detainees a chance in court to contest the charges. Look, we have a saying in this country, it's deeply embedded in who we are. Everybody deserves their day in court. And all of us want to know that if the government acts against us, we will at least have the opportunity to go to a neutral decision maker, present evidence and legal argument, and make sure that the government stays within its legal bounds. But does the day in court apply to immigrants? Absolutely.

23:48Nobody can be spirited out of the country without some opportunity to contest the factual and legal basis for that. And it turned out, when the full facts were known, This Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported by mistake. Normally, people deported in error are returned, but instead, Ruvaney says that in a phone call from a superior, he was ordered to argue against Abrego Garcia's return by telling a judge that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 gang member and a terrorist. And I respond up to chain of command, no way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct.

24:37That is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief. You're not saying Abrego Garcia is a choir boy. You're just saying that no one had managed to prove that he was a terrorist. Here's the really important thing here. Whether Mr. Abreu Garcia is or isn't a member of MS-13, or a terrorist or anything else, is beside the point. What matters here is that they did everything they did to him in violation of his due process rights. What's to stop them if they decide they don't like you anymore, to say you're a criminal, you're a member of MS-13, you're a terrorist? What's to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay to filibuster and, if necessary, to lie.

25:25And now that's you gone and your liberty changed. After refusing to sign the brief that called Abrego Garcia a terrorist, Ruvaini was fired. In June, he teamed up with lawyers from the Government Accountability Project to file a whistleblower disclosure. Making his story public helped expose a growing concern in many courts across the country, that too often now, the Justice Department is abusing the limits of the law. So the judges are saying some incredible things. Ryan Goodman is a law professor at New York University who heads a nonpartisan law journal. His team has analyzed hundreds of suits filed against the administration, and he didn't imagine what judges were saying to the Trump Justice Department.

26:18We found over 35 cases in which the judges have specifically said what the government is providing me is false information. It might be intentionally false information, including false sworn declarations time and again. In court records compiled by Goodman, Democratic and Republican appointed judges are critical of the Trump Justice Department's work. Highly misleading, said one judge. A serious violation of the court's order, wrote another. and a third warned, trust that had been earned over generations has been lost in weeks. This isn't the way things normally proceed? It's not. In fact, I would say for some of the cases that we're looking at, maybe that would happen once every 10 years.

27:06Who gets hurt by this? The one entity or person or institution that gets hurt the most is the Justice Department. We requested interviews with the head of the department, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Her former deputy, Amal Bovey, and Drew Enson, the attorney who said he didn't know when the planes were taking off, according to the court transcript, all declined the interview request. Bovey was nominated for a judgeship, and in June, he was asked about Ruvaney's claims. I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order. Bovee said in part that Ravaney was in no position to tell his superiors what to do.

27:48There's a suggestion that a line attorney, not even the head of the Office of Immigration Litigation, was in a position or considered himself to bind the department's leadership and other cabinet officials. Bovee was also asked if he had dismissed the courts with an expletive. Well, did you suggest telling the courts to do it in any manner? I don't recall. Bovey was confirmed for the judgeship, and in a statement to 60 Minutes, he wrote in part, Mr. Ruvaney's claims are a mix of falsehoods and wild distortions of reality. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. He's now charged with transporting illegal immigrants, and he's pled not guilty.

28:37A judge criticized the Justice Department's poor attempts to connect him to MS-13, and he was not charged with terrorism. About those prisoners sent to El Salvador, they were released to their home country, Venezuela. And in April, the Supreme Court agreed unanimously that they had been entitled to their day in court. This interview is the first time that your face has been seen in such a public way. And I wonder if that concerns you. It does. At the same time, I think about what we're losing in this moment. I think about why I went to the Department of Justice to do justice. And I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

29:33And my view of that oath is, I need to speak up and draw attention to what has happened to the department, what is happening to the rule of law. I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now.