"Das ist eine Lüge. Und ich kann meinen Namen nicht unter ein solches Schreiben setzen" - Der Fall Kilmar García

It is a sentence that echoes through Washington: "That is a lie. And I cannot put my name on such a document." With these words, former government attorney Erez Reuveni said on CBS’s 60 Minutes what many had long known – that the Trump administration had instructed him to make false statements in a court proceeding regarding Kilmar Ábrego García. Reuveni, who had worked for years at the Justice Department, reported that he had refused to sign a statement portraying Ábrego García as a member of the notorious MS-13 gang. "That is neither factually correct nor legally defensible. That is a lie," he said. Shortly thereafter, he lost his position. In one of the first hearings, Reuveni contradicted the Justice Department’s accusations directly in court, causing a stir. See also our article: "The Shadow of the State – How a Wife Fights the Dehumanization of Her Husband," published April 17, 2025, at the link: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/der-schatten-des-staates-wie-eine-ehefrau-gegen-die-entmenschlichung-ihres-mannes-kaempft/

Whistleblower Erez Reuveni of the U.S. Department of Justice says he recalls then-senior Justice Department official Emil Bove telling attorneys at an internal meeting that they might have to consider saying to a court: "F* you."

Moderator Scott Pelley asked during the broadcast: "So you are not saying Ábrego García is a choirboy, but only that no one managed to prove he is a terrorist?" Reuveni replied: "That is not the point. What matters is that everything they did to him violated his constitutional right to due process. If a government can decide it no longer likes you and then simply declares you a criminal – what stops it from doing the same thing tomorrow?"

Instead of acknowledging the mistake, the White House tried to justify the case with new accusations. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared in April that Ábrego García was not only part of the gang but also involved in human trafficking and was "a leader of a terrorist organization." None of these claims could be substantiated. We have reported extensively on this, as we were involved in the research and were present in El Salvador.

Ábrego García is now back in the United States – in an ICE detention center in Pennsylvania. After months of reviewing his file and internal investigations, he now stands on the verge of release. Even within government circles, his case is now considered a judicial fiasco that has become a symbol of the moral and institutional decay of the justice system.