DOJ whistleblower complains to Congress that internal watchdog isn’t doing its job

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN

(CNN) — A former federal immigration prosecutor and whistleblower who has taken issue with Trump administration leadership has now gone to Capitol Hill, saying the internal watchdog offices of the Justice Department are doing nothing to investigate his and other complaints.

Lawyers for Erez Reuveni, who was fired last year after opposing his superiors’ legal approach to deportations, say the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General hasn’t investigated “any of the serious allegations of misconduct made over the past 15 months,” including complaints made by members of Congress, according to a letter sent Monday to House and Senate Judiciary committee leaders and obtained by CNN.

The entire system of accountability that Congress had set up for the Justice Department is now dead, Reuveni’s attorneys say.

“The epidemic of alleged misconduct has been met with a shrug by the agency whose job it is to address such allegations,” the letter states. “The inaction of the OIG comes at a time when the amount of governmental misconduct and violation of court orders by DOJ lawyers around the country have reached epic and unprecedented proportions.”

It adds: “The collapse of DOJ’s accountability mechanisms, and the widespread evidence of an epidemic of misconduct within the DOJ, call for your immediate attention and rigorous oversight.”

In response to several of Reuveni’s assertions on Monday, a Justice Department spokesman said, “Just because this former DOJ employee is desperate for relevancy doesn’t mean there is any legitimate basis to investigate DOJ attorneys being instructed to do their jobs and vigorously litigate on behalf of the United States.”

The IG’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Reuveni first complained to the inspector general and Congress last year about his belief that Justice Department leaders under the new Trump administration were intentionally misleading courts and not interested in following court orders. He also alleged he was fired as “reprisal for his whistleblowing,” which the DOJ denies.

Reuveni had accused Emil Bove, a former Donald Trump defense lawyer-turned-top Justice Department official, of crudely telling DOJ attorneys they may need to consider ignoring court orders, as the administration was preparing to deport migrants to El Salvador under the controversial Alien Enemies Act. Bove was then appointed by Trump to become an appellate judge on the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, and he maintained he hadn’t given any direction that would disqualify him for the federal bench.

The inspector general’s office this January ultimately told Reuveni it would refer his allegations to a different office at the Justice Department, the Office of Professional Responsibility. But that office, Reuveni claims, has little ability to seriously investigate internally.

The professional responsibility office has fewer than three dozen employees, whereas the inspector general’s office has more than 400, Reuveni’s team wrote. And the current Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche removed the chief of the professional responsibility office last year.

“The Trump administration has decapitated OPR,” Reuveni’s letter says. “Gone are the days when OIG used to fight tooth and nail to handle investigations assigned to OPR, and when OIG would work with OPR on major investigations … OPR has not expressed any interest in conducting the investigation, nor is it clear that it has the resources to do so.”

The inspector general’s office also said it wouldn’t investigate his whistleblower allegations because of pending litigation. That, too, was a faulty excuse, Reuveni’s lawyers argued.

“There is almost always existing or foreseeable litigation that relates to an OIG investigation,” his letter says.

In fact, in the past, the DOJ inspector general has taken on some of the most substantial investigations of accusations of wrongdoing within the department and the FBI, including after the 2016 investigation of Russian interference in the presidential election. The inspector general at the time, Michael Horowitz, is now the watchdog for the Federal Reserve Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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