The lawyer, Erez Reuveni, answered most questions asked by Judge Paula Xinis with āI donāt know whyā or āI havenāt been told whyā. For example, when asked on what legal basis or authority the US government had deported the man in question, Abrego Garcia, the lawyer said he didnāt know.
āFrom the moment he was seized, it was unconstitutional,ā Judge Xinis said during the hearing. āIf there isnāt a document, a warrant, a statement of probable cause, then there is no basis to have seized him in the first place. Thatās how Iām looking at it,ā the judge said.
(Source is linked article)
The judge also questioned why the U.S. canāt get him back. Reuveni said that was the first question he asked when he was assigned to the case.
āI have not received today an answer that I find satisfactory,ā he added.
Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-orders-return-of-maryland-man-wrongly-deported-to-el-salvador-mega-prison
The judge also asked for evidence that the deported man, , was a member of the gang MS-13. But Reuveni couldnāt provide
Xinis noted in her opinion Sunday that the Justice Department presented āno evidenceā that Abrego Garcia belongs to MS-13, effectively abandoning that position in her court.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/06/judge-order-return-man-el-salvador-00274526
Finally, the lawyer made one last request, to wait and let him ask his client - the US government - to try and return Abrego Garcia first. But look at how he frames his request:
āI would ask the court to give us, the defendants, one more chance to do this,ā Reuveni said. āThatās my recommendation to my client, but so far that hasnāt happened.ā
Basically telling the judge āIāve already asked and got told no way but let me ask againā as a surefire way to make the judge ignore the request.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/05/doj-lawyer-leave-deportation-00274412
Admittedly, itās not entirely clear yet that this was deliberate malicious compliance - but Erez Reuveni has nearly 15 years of experience and almost certainly would have known how to make a more compelling argument before the court, had he been so inclined.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/05/doj-lawyer-leave-deportation-00274412
In fact, the current US attorney general said this about the matter,
āHe did not argue,ā the attorney general complained, although Reuveni did argue that Xinis had no jurisdiction to consider the case. āHe shouldnāt have taken the case. He shouldnāt have argued it, if thatās what he was going to do,ā she said. āYou have to vigorously argue on behalf of your client.ā
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/05/doj-lawyer-leave-deportation-00274412
He could have not taken the case, it seems. But he would have known that if he passed on it, someone else would argue it, and that someone might do a much better job in front of the court. So itās probable that he took it upon himself to throw the case and save this man.
Alas, it seems his bosses saw through that. Even though he did argue that the court had no jurisdiction to consider the case, as he was likely ordered to do,
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent Reuveni suspending him for failing to follow āfollow a directive from your superiorsā and āengaging in conduct prejudicial to your client.ā
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/05/doj-lawyer-leave-deportation-00274412
To me, that reads as if Blanche had figured out that Reuveni had complied with orders, but only maliciously so, and thus treated it as a case of non-compliance. (In truth, malicious compliance here hurt the governmentās case worse than actual non-compliance - refusing to take the case at all - would have.)
Iām not 100% sure Iām right - after all Erez Reuveni is a professional lawyer and thus knows what to say and not say in public to protect himself - but if I am right, then Iād consider Erez Reuveni a true USian hero.
Agreed, 100%
Again, in 100% agreement.
I addressed this in my comments about the case. So apparently the US attorney general said this,
Now, it wasnāt clear to me if a DOJ lawyer can avoid taking on a case like this, as Bondi seems to be saying. But Googleās AI did report this to me, below.
If Googleās AI is accurate or Bondi is correct, then Reuveni could have passed on the pass and let someone else argue it. And if every legit ethical lawyer in the DOJ was allowed to pass on the case, itād end up in the lap of some newly appointed MAGA lawyer guy who might have struck lightning and someone convinced the judge that reversing the deportation is not possible - or at least gotten additional delays in, prolonging Abrego Garciaās suffering.
So my case is that he didnāt do the minimum (which was the pass on the case) but he took it and then did the minimum on the case, ensuring a victory for the other side.
From Googleās AI:
So I meant to write in the above comment that while not every case of quiet quitting is malicious compliance, and not every case of malicious compliance related to employment is the same as quiet quitting, there is definitely room for overlap - a situation where one is both quiet quitting and performing malicious compliance. I thought that this was such a case.
After reading https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/e285ec96adf8d443/5868d536-full.pdf Iām backing away from that. What the new whistleblower report seems to allege is that Reuveni was ordered to make statements to the court that he knew were wrong and misleading, and he outright refused - which is honourable but itās non-compliance rather than malicious compliance.
He also actively sought to confidentially relay the situation to folks higher up on the food chain in order to get them to push back against this, which is probably too much effort to count as quiet quitting.