Left: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Chief Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg takes part in a mock trial at Harman Hall in Washington, D.C., Feb. 17, 2026. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images). Right: DOJ Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Immigration Litigation of the Civil Division Drew Ensign (DOJ).
Joined by a former White House lawyer involved in the Russia probe, a legal group asked the D.C. Bar to investigate and hand down “appropriate discipline” against a DOJ lawyer for a “pattern of misconduct” in the course of representing the Trump administration on immigration cases.
Law&Crime has reported how, during an emergency hearing on a Saturday, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg verbally ordered the Trump administration to halt Alien Enemies Act (AEA) deportations of 252 Venezuelans alleged to be gang members and to turn any planes in the air around, only for that order to be ignored. The latest evidence that the mid-March 2025 controversy has not gone away came Tuesday, with Lawyers Defending American Democracy”s (LDAD) ethics complaint against Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign.
Starting with his alleged “lack of candor” or knowingly false statements of fact to a judge, the complaint said that Ensign violated professional rules when he “knowingly made two false statements of material fact to the Court” in response to Boasberg’s questions about whether AEA deportations were happening. At the hearing, Ensign said “I don’t know the answer to that question,” when asked if flights would take off within 48 hours, and that he did “not have additional details [he] can provide at this time.”
“Mr. Ensign failed to correct these false statements,” the complaint said, noting that Boasberg responded by launching a contempt probe that remains on ice to the present day. Ensign and fired DOJ attorney and whistleblower Erez Reuveni were each scheduled to testify under oath on whether the government willfully violated a court order and about who might be criminally responsible before the D.C. Circuit shut that down.
Reuveni was placed on leave and then fired after nearly 15 years at the DOJ in April 2025 after he said he “refused directions from his superiors to file a brief misrepresenting” facts about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wrongly deported Salvadoran man who maintains the DOJ is vindictively prosecuting him. It was also Reuveni who acknowledged in court that Abrego Garcia “should not have been removed” from the country.
Then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, now the acting AG, said Reuveni failed to “follow a directive from [his] superiors; fail[ed] to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States; and engag[ed] in conduct prejudicial to [his] client. But that would not be the last word from Reuveni.
He alleged that Ensign was there the day before Boasberg issued the restraining order the government flouted, when former Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove had suggested during a meeting that the government give the courts a “f— you” if the government was blocked from carrying out mass AEA deportations.
Blanche countered that Reuveni was a “disgruntled former employee” who was using Bove’s then-pending nomination for a judgeship at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lash out with “false” claims, and Bove went on to be confirmed nonetheless. But the episode continues to cause problems for Ensign.
“Mr. Ensign’s statement that he did not know whether AEA removals would take place in the next 24 or 48 hours was false. As noted, he had been present at a meeting the previous day at which then Acting Assistant U.S. Attorney General Emil Bove stated that one or more planes containing individuals subject to the AEA would be taking off over the weekend, ‘no matter what,'” the complaint said. “Before the hearing resumed, Mr. Ensign and Mr. Reuveni received an email from plaintiffs’ attorney citing public reporting of flight information and stating that they had reason to believe that people were on planes for imminent deportation.”
“Mr. Ensign had a duty, at a minimum, to tell the Court that the federal government intended to remove the Venezuelan migrants within the next 48 hours and that he had been informed by plaintiffs’ counsel that their deportation was imminent based on public reporting,” the complaint added. “Instead, Mr. Ensign falsely told the Court he knew nothing about these things and he failed to correct these material misstatements of fact.”
LDAD chair Scott Harshbarger, a former Massachusetts attorney general, said “[e]very lawyer – including government lawyers – has a duty to tell the truth to the courts and uphold the integrity of the justice system.”
“This complaint asks the D.C. Bar to investigate serious allegations that go to the heart of the rule of law,” he added.
Ty Cobb, once a White House lawyer handling Trump’s response to the late Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, released a statement of his own explaining why he joined LDAD and a number of other attorneys and former judges in signing the ethics complaint against Ensign.
Ty Cobb, former White House special counsel during the first Trump administration, sits for an interview in 2025 (PBS/YouTube).
“Government attorneys are not exempt from the ethical rules that govern the legal profession and, because of the oath they take, their obligations are even more sacred,” Cobb said. “Accountability is essential to maintaining public confidence in the administration of justice.”
Law&Crime reached out to Ensign for comment on the complaint.
