The Daily - A D.O.J. Whistleblower Speaks Out
Episode Date: July 23, 2025Warning: This episode contains strong language.An explosive whistle-blower report claims that the Justice Department is asking government lawyers to lie to the courts, and that this has forced career ...officials to chose between upholding the Constitution and pledging loyalty to the president.Rachel Abrams speaks to the whistle-blower about his career in the Justice Department and his complaint saying he was fired for telling the truth.Guest: Erez Reuveni, who filed a whistle-blower complaint against the Department of Justice.Background reading: Mr. Reuveni has warned of an assault on the law by the Trump administration.At the Justice Department, Emil Bove III suggested violating court orders, according to the complaint.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Kent Nishimura for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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.
Erez Rouveni, welcome to The Daily.
Nice to meet you.
I spoke to Ares Rouvainy, the whistleblower, on Monday.
I'm very curious how you feel being with us today.
Well, I mean, I don't, 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, Rouvainy 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 truths
of 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 Bovi, who, before joining the DOJ, was President Trump's personal lawyer. So I've come forward because the Trump administration has 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 till I do a court and those three weeks, I was put to the question, which side am I gonna be on?
And ultimately, I mean, I didn't sign up till I do 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,
Erez Ravani on behalf of the United States.
You're not necessarily saying,
Erez Ravani on behalf of some large,. You're not necessarily saying, Erez Ravani
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 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 the first Trump administration, the Biden administration.
Mm.
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 I 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
I 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 gonna 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 seeing 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 Juenson, 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 was 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 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 Bovi, 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, Bovi says,
and if some court or 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, is he serious?
It wasn't clear to me if it was just acting or bravado chest dumping.
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 rushed it 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. That 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 730 the next day.
So by that morning, Judge Boasberg 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 p.m. later that day. That hearing got moved to five,
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. Boevey,
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, Boesberg 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 first operationalization, if you will, of the F.U. 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. 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 Bovi to essentially, I'm paraphrasing,
to ignore this order that Bovesberg issued to not let those people off those planes.
And that Bovi 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 video where they just hand these individuals
over to the El Salvadorian authorities and transfer them to CICOT, the Maximum Security Prison.
And that's when we really did tell the court
if you really sunk in.
Because now these folks are in Salvadoran custody
at a maximum security prison.
And so we're all just stunned that we have had
any participation in what has just happened. We'll be right back.
So what's the next thing that happens that concerns you just as far as telling the truth to the judge, obeying court orders, et cetera?
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 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.
That's the idea here.
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 F you move here was we were forbidden from working with DHS to circulate guidance
about this injunction.
Mm-hmm.
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 Seacat.
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 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 Abrego 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 he 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 it's kind of out of nowhere.
James Percival, who is a senior counselor to the Secretary, Homeland Security, Secretary
Noem, 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, Abrego Garcia is some sort of Kaiser So-say, 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 knows are saying publicly is this guy's
ms thirteen mastermind a very dangerous individual a terrorist and so that's all happening in public
the crux of the email i am not 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 ICE 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. Abrego-Garcia was removed by mistake.
He didn't like that you had admitted to that.
He didn't like that the US 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.
Abrego-Garcia.
And then in that same phone call, I'm directed to cease asking any further questions related
to bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back, about his safety in Seacat.
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 US government.
So I go to court and the judge asks me, among other things, do you concede 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 Abrego 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. Obregó-Garcia is a terrorist.
I have the same answers.
And very soon afterwards, we get 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 raised 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, I'm, this is still not true.
This is still a lie.
I'm, I'm, I can't, 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?
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 2 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 ruin the vacation that my family was having, but it was devastating.
This was 15 years of my life.
I thought I would retire from federal service 15 years from now.
I thought I would be a lifer.
I built myself up.
I had risen through the ranks.
I really loved 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
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 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 Arrows Ruvaini, 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 gonna fire him.
And if you guys wanna follow in his footsteps
and not play ball, not pick loyalty to the president's agenda over your duty a candidate of 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 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 it very important for me to tell my story
through the proper whistleblower channels, 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 of?
Well, I'll give you an example.
I was watching some news coverage about Abrego Garcia
and a certain Trump administration talking head
gets on the TV and floats the following possibility.
Anyone supporting Mr. Abrego 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 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 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.
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.
Ares Rouvaini, thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you.
In the weeks following Rouveni's firing from the Justice Department, President Trump nominated
Emile Bovi to a lifetime federal judgeship.
In his confirmation hearing, Bovi denied the thrust of Rouveni'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 Rouveni's
version of events.
Bovi is expected to be confirmed by the Senate in the coming days.
We'll be right back.
Here's what else you need to note, Dei.
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 Hba, 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 Habba'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 Sydney Harper. It was
edited by Rachel Quester and Paige Cowitt. 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 Brunberg
and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.
Special thanks to Devlin Barrett and Margaret Ho.
That's it for the daily.
I'm Rachel Abrams.
See you tomorrow.