Damning New Evidence on DOJ Vet's Alleged Plot To Tell Courts "F*** You"

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1:25We're tracking this breaking news. President Trump losing on immigration again today. This is even after the Supreme Court recently intervened, trying to help him fend off lower courts that pause his orders when they are deemed through the process likely illegal. But that's back where the administration finds itself again tonight because the news is a rebuke from a federal judge hammering Trump with another national block of what has been this flailing effort to try to rewrite citizenship. The ruling freezes the White House. There are new details while that's going on that we're getting about that DOJ whistleblower case, which was against Trump's Justice Department and refers as well to the embattled and allegedly at times unlawful immigration agenda of this administration.

2:10There are now damning messages coming out that reveal the real time texts about a top officials directive to defy court orders being ready to say F you to the judges. All of this bolsters those initial reports, which shook the DOJ and Washington when they first broke.

2:28Jason Johnson:Emil Bovee, a former Trump personal lawyer, now top aide to the deputy attorney general, pushed DOJ officials to ignore court orders. Bovay stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts, F you, and ignore any such order. Silence overtook the room. Eris Ruvaney filed a whistleblower complaint against the Department of Justice. He says, I didn't sign up to lie. In response to his termination. That official, Mr. Bovay, once did Trump's criminal defense work. He's up for this judgeship. And he did fend off the same accusations in his second testimony. That whistleblower, though, is telling The New York Times today that Bovet's testimony didn't clearly or firmly deny all of this.

3:15And now we have the receipts, which show other people at the time heard the same thing because multiple officials were texting each other how Bovet talked up telling the courts FU, which, of course, means in this term that they wanted to defy the courts, the DOJ breaking the law rather than upholding it. another DOJ lawyer writes in a text, I guess we're going to say FU to the court, and the response was a sarcastic super. Then you can see the other two discussing how Pam Bondi, the AG, would ultimately be responsible. The point is that these other lawyers who are inside the Trump administration, who had been deemed loyal enough to be senior enough to handle this immigration case, were aware of this plot.

3:59Telling judges FU, defying orders. This is a Watergate level of evidence. Texting privately about it then, this was before that lawyer, the now whistleblower, was fired or moved into this position. So again, from a legal perspective, that makes the evidence more credible. A DOJ response to this, they're denying it today. They're saying no one was ever asked to defy a court order. You'll notice saying that no one was asked to explicitly defy a court order is different than denying that Mr. Bove did tell potentially a bunch of people that they would say F you to the courts or that that was one of the potential plots.

4:36And we're early in this four-year term. The DOJ is responding because it has to, because ignoring this isn't going to work right now, because facts, evidence, whistleblowers can still matter, because the receipts and the public reporting is putting heat on them for betraying the Justice Department itself at a time when they are tonight losing in the courts. While the same DOJ on a very different issue is taking heat from the MAGA conspiracy crowd for hyping and then failing to deliver on what Pam Bondi said in public was a Jeffrey Epstein client list that she claimed was sitting on her desk. Either she was terribly misinformed or she was actively lying because now she runs the same DOJ that says there's no such list.

5:16MAGA leaders are calling for A.G. Bondi to go. Tucker Carlson and is basically saying she might have to be the first person sacrificed in this second term. That's a major storm on several fronts, plus those court losses for an attorney general early in her term and in the crux of everything Trump's trying to do on these issues. We're joined by two regulars, our MSNBC viewers know, Jason Johnson and Melissa Murray. Melissa, your thoughts on these stories, which are pretty intersecting the court loss today and whistleblower accounts of this immigration agenda. Well, the court loss isn't surprising.

5:53The text of the 14th Amendment is plain, and the Supreme Court, even as it narrowed the eligibility for nationwide injunctions, would say that class actions would be a suitable vehicle. The administration has said that it will challenge the class certification procedures that Judge LaPlante used here. So I think we can expect this to go back to the court. But this all intersects, as you say, with what's happening at DOJ, because, again, we see that the DOJ is very much advancing the project of this administration. The idea of the DOJ as a separate and independent institution, separate from the office of the president, seems to be no more the case.

6:32This is very much Donald Trump's DOJ. There isn't independence. And because there is no independence, it's very clear that this administration and the DOJ is going to be advancing the president's agenda. And that means appealing this decision from Judge LaPlante. It means going after Erez Ravouni because he has been a whistleblower and has sounded the alarm on what is happening at DOJ. And it also shows that the interaction between DOJ and other relevant departments like DHS is really riven right now. There's a breakdown in communication. There's a breakdown in coherence on these policies as DOJ strives to do what this president wants.

7:11Jason, it's been a bad week for Attorney General Pam Bondi.

7:17Jason Johnson:Yeah, it has. And, you know, but the reality is this should have been expected, right? Like the moment that the court said this sort of we're going to change the criteria, we knew that every ACLU immigrant organization, they were all going to squabble up. We knew that they were going to engage in this sort of sort of pushback in order to stop this end of birth white citizenship. So, you know, Pamboddy should have expected that. The DOJ should have expected that. The situation with Beauvais is a little different. The idea that, look, we've seen the Trump administration consistently ignore court rulings.

7:48Jason Johnson:And let's remember that in this sort of big, ridiculous bill they just passed, there were actually stipulations in that bill to make it harder to take away funding from courts to enforce if individuals don't listen after a court ruling has happened. So to have this come out that you have somebody on the record saying we're just going to ignore the courts. And this is important, important distinction. It's one thing for a member of the Department of Justice to say, we're going to appeal this ruling. We're going to fight this ruling as much as we can. That is completely different than saying F the law.

8:17Jason Johnson:Right. And so this is another reflection of sort of how off base this administration is from the law, from from values, from anything that we've expected before. And as to whether or not Pam Bonney couldn't figure out where the Epstein list was, that's something for the conspiracy theorists, because I never assumed that they were going to release that no matter how much Trump talked about last year. Right. And they may have talked about it for other reasons, hype, politics. In her case, though, coming into office, she's either was terribly misinformed, which is its own kind of malpractice, or she was lying.

8:47She just thought you go on Fox and you lie about this stuff. Her people, if you will, the people who are sort of, pardon me, in the MAGA crowd are the ones most upset. So they're under all of that pressure. I know Professor Murray has previously quoted Not Like Us on this broadcast, so she may have heard your Kendrick Squabble Up reference, which was artful. Professor, I want to play for you Justice Jackson, who's been in a bit more of a public written clash with Barrett on this high court as they are tested in this second term, saying this. I would say the state of our democracy.

9:31I would say that I am really very interested in getting people to focus and to invest and to pay attention to what is happening in our country and in our government. Judges are supposed to speak in a nonpartisan, careful way, which she does. But the reference there, Professor, was that she has concerns about her democracy right now that keep her up at night. That's not exactly a clean book of health for the for the current administration. So a clean bill of health for the current administration is also not a clean bill of health. Oh, sorry. We'll go professor first. Sorry. Oh, sorry, Jason. This is not a clean bill of health.

10:11Well, there are two professors. Professor Murray, that's my bad. My bad. Um, she is not just castigating the administration. She's also castigating her colleagues. I mean, the call is coming from inside the House. She says that in one decision that the Supreme Court is basically donning its emergency responder gear and not dousing the flames, but actually fanning them, exacerbating them by casting a different net on some of these rules. I would be taking a lower standard for the administration and essentially putting a thumb on the scale. That's, I think, really important to understand here, especially in light of what's been going on in DOJ.

10:49Those allegations by the whistleblower came out because Emile Bove, who had previously been one of the individuals to represent Donald Trump in his New York Hush Money case, who's now at the DOJ, has been nominated to the Third Circuit. So this is an appellate court that is likely to receive a lot of the challenges that are coming from lower court judges. And essentially, the charges that have been leveled against him in those text messages probably would scuttle a nomination in ordinary times that these aren't ordinary times. It's very likely he's going to be confirmed to the Third Circuit where he's going to sit and likely be someone who receives warmly whatever this administration puts forward.

11:29So Justice Jackson is not just talking about the administration, but all of the institutions that are supposed to check the president, check Congress and also check each other in the courts. Yeah, I mean, you lay it all out there, Professor Johnson. I want to get you in on this and it doesn't help distinguish you guys when you have the same title. So, you know, I'm still getting the hang of this moderator thing. But go ahead, Professor Johnson.

11:51Jason Johnson:You know, it's interesting because we never want to run the risk of sort of over personalizing things or falling into any sort of gender traps. But it's very clear from these last couple of rulings that that Justice Barrett feels that she's being specifically called out by Justice Jackson. And and many legal analysts have said, hey, you know, when you write these sort of majority rulings, these are sorts of conflicts that can happen. But I think that Justice Jackson isn't just speaking as a Supreme Court justice when she's talking about this. She's talking also as an American citizen. She's not just talking as someone who's, look, I'm with eight other people and we're supposed to be leading this country forward.

12:26Jason Johnson:She's saying, look, the failings of this body, the failings of this particular branch, whether it's Justice Barrett, whether it's any of these other justice, is having a negative effect on everyone else in this country and the ability of regular Americans to believe that their rights will be protected. So I think that what she's doing is very impressive because she's stepping off the bench and speaking to the people about the frustrations that she understands, despite her high position. Yeah, her high position, the care with which she chooses her words, but saying, hey, you're not imagining this.

12:59It's not a normal debate among justices about traditional activities. This is what we're living through. And what, if anything, is the citizenry going to do about it? I want to thank both our professors tonight, our lead off guests. Thank you both. Coming up, we have one of those special reports we've been working on. This is about the power grab. I want to walk through documenting what's different about this second term, what you need to know. We also have a look down the rabbit hole of the conspiracy theory mindset and why the Internet and the MAGA movement have collided with a longer problem in American history.

13:28By the end of the hour, Nick Offerman is here with a new film that's timely. This will be his beat debut later tonight.

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15:09Turning to our special report now about how President Trump's second term is different than his first. We're over 170 days in, and there's an array of evidence that Trump is pushing to undercut the functional independence and checks in our government to get more power for himself. Now, that's not a policy or ideological issue. It's not just something between the parties. It actually tries to reshape our democracy and using actions that have long been opposed across the political spectrum. I know we live in divided times, but just consider that sending federal troops into American streets is exactly the kind of big government overreach that conservatives have long said they oppose, big government being something they say is a liberal problem.

15:52Or the heavy tactics of these mass federal agents raiding homes and workplaces instead of the local policing and states' rights which conservatives claim to support. Trump is using executive powers to also retaliate against educators, against free speech, colleges, law firms, only because he disagrees with how they speak. Again, a crackdown that uses or abuses, some courts say, government power in a way that libertarians have long opposed. And they're the police tactics, specifically deployed against his critics or Democratic officials and protesters. Trump also is testing whether he can get away with asserting the power to ignore or even outright cancel certain federal laws, which undercuts the rule of law, quite literally, and the purpose of laws that Republicans and Democrats have previously passed through their elected power in Congress.

16:47Now, Trump may have wanted some of these outcomes in his first term, but he actually rarely got them like this. So if it's felt different lately, if you've said, wait, this is kind of even different in the first term, that feeling connects to the facts of what we're living with. So what's changed? Well, a big shift is actually inside the government. In the first term, Trump oversaw an array of public servants who really did view him as an aberration. He was this first-time politician with a narrow mandate. He got fewer total votes than the opponent. He won through the Electoral College. You may remember it was a surprise to a lot of people.

17:23And those individuals viewed him that way, and they were, many of them, committed to holding the line on law, on the Constitution, on federal powers, the stuff I just mentioned. And when Trump would push to defy clear laws, I'm not talking about politics or policy, but clear lines, things in the Constitution, those checks and balances, a lot of those people inside the government would try to hold the line. That included military and security officials, people he personally appointed, as well as those in the bureaucracy, many headlines about this. Individuals who even at risk stepped up, stopped, or revised Trump's plans, or sometimes said, if this is your goal, Mr.

18:01President, we have to find a way to do it constitutionally. If you remember all the way back to that Mueller probe, they found crimes by people in Trump's orbit. But remember, Mueller did not say he had a clear crime that he found by Donald Trump. And that's partly because of the people in the way. Trump's White House lawyer, McGahn and others. We have the documented evidence from them, their own testimony, how they stopped Trump's schemes to obstruct justice, which can be a crime, or try to get Mueller fired, which would have been a big deal. He wanted to do that thing that was probably unconstitutional.

18:36They stopped him. So in a way, Trump's most unlawful instincts were stemmed. And that's why we have this system of government, by the way. That's why even powerful positions have these checks. Some of them are internal. Some of them are the lawyers in the room. And in a way, it protected Trump in the first term. He didn't have a lot of domestic achievements within the traditional job of being president, but he also was kept by those adults in the room from doing the type of things that have become pretty common in these first 170 days of the second term. Indeed, if you remember that New York Times piece by an official who sort of said there was a resistance inside the Trump administration just to keep him from the worst stuff.

19:16In fact, we checked that very official who wrote about those guardrails now says in the second term, the people who played those roles are gone. And remember, I know we live in this partisan times. And if you talk to certain people, they'll try to make everything partisan. Oh, this means you're not MAGA or you're against MAGA or you love MAGA. I'm not even talking about MAGA politics. A lot of the people we're just referring to there were conservative, very politically MAGA individuals, Republicans all. And they stopped at breaking laws or bids to end democracy or kneecap the Justice Department, the type of stuff in the news tonight, while agreeing with Trump's platform and the Republican Party's plans otherwise.

19:58Now, that same first term vet I just mentioned who wrote in The Times, Miles Taylor, he explains what has changed is how Trump has completely figured out how to purge those people. The so-called axis of adults was real, and there was a pretty strong cabinet and contingent who would push back against bad ideas. But look, he's got an ear for that. He knows who the people are that say no, and the president quickly identified those folks. And then you saw a very steady purge happen over the course of two years. And he's largely gotten rid of those folks. True. He's gotten rid of them. And coming in with round two, he's very clear about who he's not going to deal with, who he will still purge, even in the lower levels.

20:47He got rid of the inspectors general, which is a relatively obscure watchdog group. But he got rid of a bunch of them in an unusual way. So there's none of those guardrails internally. And the rule of law itself is now, according to many experts, quite clearly under siege. We're at an early point in the term. People have noticed. People are fighting back. The president of the United States is not king. What we're seeing is this administration continue to run afoul of the law. This is against the Constitution. The king unbound by laws who rules by decree. It's going against our rights as people and especially as American citizens.

21:22What's it going to take for us to wake up? The American people bow to no king.

21:30is it going to be too late? Is it going to be when the president has accreted all this power

21:35Jason Johnson:and the Congress is an afterthought? And the Congress is an afterthought. Well, Republicans have been pretty partisan for a while in D.C., but they've hit a new level in Trump's second term. The GOP's congressional leaders are now both from this Trump era, different than the first term. They oversee a caucus that bends to Trump, and if there are any holdouts, you've seen the game. they still get Trump to the votes he needs. Now, back in the day, first term, you had the late John McCain risking a lot when he gave that memorable thumbs down on the Senate floor to save Obamacare. All we've managed to do is make more popular a policy that wasn't very popular when we started trying to get rid of it.

22:19I will not vote for this bill as it is today. Mr. Peters. The Senate failed totally to pass a skinny version of the Obamacare repeal bill. The maverick made his mark. The president at this point probably has limited ability to sway someone like John McCain. That was the first term. Trump saw it was hard to legislate. And he just turned away from it and he's never come back. Indeed, he's not been involved in most domestic legislation this year. Only turning to the budget because it's required. It's not something the government can skip. They have to pass that budget to fund the government. But everything else, immigration, political retribution, these diversity clashes in the second term, Trump doesn't send bills to Congress on those topics.

23:05That would take work. It would take some collaboration with lawmakers, even if they're Republicans. No, Trump is pursuing these goals first through the power grab of these White House orders. And some are so lawless they keep getting smacked down. That was a top story tonight. This flood of executive orders leading to a loss, right? because you can't just rewrite what's in the Constitution that defines citizenship. No president's ever had that power. But his current aides are not editing or limiting these orders, even if they're going to lose in court as he lost again today with another national freeze.