Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, has been known for decades as a champion of whistle-blowers. But in recent days, he has faced growing criticism that he has retreated from his signature issue in a battle over the nomination of a Trump loyalist to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench.
The fight over the nominee, Emil Bove III, a top official at the Justice Department, some argue, is now chilling the very efforts Mr. Grassley, 91, has spent more than 40 years fostering.
Last month, a day before Mr. Bove testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee over his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, a former lawyer for the Justice Department, Erez Reuveni, filed a detailed complaint describing Mr. Bove as a crucial player in pressuring department lawyers to mislead judges and ignore court orders in the administration’s frantic bid to send Venezuelan migrants to a high-security prison in El Salvador.
Mr. Grassley’s reaction was striking, particularly given that he has long trumpeted whistle-blower claims by law enforcement officials.
“The timing alone indicates that this was a coordinated political strike and there are other reasons to be skeptical” of Mr. Reuveni’s claims, Mr. Grassley said at the outset of Mr. Bove’s hearing.
Mr. Grassley’s treatment of whistle-blowers like Mr. Reuveni is discouraging others from talking to Congress, lawyers and others representing government workers fired or demoted by the Trump administration say.
Since Friday, two whistle-blowers have come forward as a vote on Mr. Bove’s nomination nears. One has offered evidence suggesting the nominee knowingly misled lawmakers during his confirmation hearing, while another has signaled they have information confirming some of Mr. Reuveni’s allegations against Mr. Bove, according to lawmakers and advocates.
“Now more than ever, whistle-blowers need a champion among congressional Republicans who will listen in good faith to their claims of government abuse and work in a bipartisan fashion to hold culpable officials accountable,” said David Laufman, a former Justice Department lawyer who now represents current and former government workers. “For many years, Senator Grassley was that champion. But under the current administration, he has shied away from doing what’s right.”
Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, Mr. Grassley accused Democrats of trying “to weaponize my respect for whistle-blowers and the whole whistle-blowing process against me and, in return, against Mr. Bove.”
Mr. Grassley said he considered Mr. Reuveni a whistle-blower but added, “even if you accept most of the claims as true, there is still no scandal.”
When it came to the two people who more recently indicated they had important information to offer about Mr. Bove, Mr. Grassley said his staff was “stonewalled and given the runaround.”
Mr. Bove, the lawmaker said, has denied the thrust of the whistle-blowers’ allegations, and denied misleading lawmakers in his congressional testimony.
The brute force politics of confirmation fights often overshadows the policy goals of specific lawmakers, and that appears to be true in the case of Mr. Bove.
One former F.B.I. agent, however, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that the more recent concerns about Mr. Grassley go back months. That former agent pointed to the senator’s effusive praise for Kash Patel during his confirmation hearing to be the F.B.I. director, saying those comments discouraged a number of current agents from telling Congress about their concerns.
But Jane Turner, a former F.B.I. whistle-blower who now serves on the board of the National Whistleblower Center, said Mr. Grassley had been “indispensable” to whistle-blowers, helping more than 1,000 share their accounts of wrongdoing.
“He saved my bacon 25 years ago,” said Ms. Turner, referring to her efforts to expose malfeasance in the bureau, leading to what she said was retaliation by her superiors. “Grassley stepped in and he wrote them a letter and said back off, and they did.”
Since joining the Justice Department in January, Mr. Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump, quickly emerged as a key driver of the changes underway at the department.
In February, he pushed federal prosecutors to drop criminal charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, leading to a host of resignations. Weeks later, he pushed for criminal investigations of protesters at Columbia University that federal judges viewed skeptically. And in mid-March, according to Mr. Reuveni, Mr. Bove told Justice Department lawyers they may decide to ignore orders from federal judges to accomplish some of Mr. Trump’s immigration goals.
Stacey Young of Justice Connection, a group that advocates on behalf of current and former Justice Department employees, said the group had repeatedly talked to agency employees “who are too scared of retribution to internally report the fraud and abuse they’ve witnessed.”
Increasingly, she said, those employees no longer see Congress as a viable option, faced with the prospect of being discounted or criticized. Mr. Grassley and other lawmakers, she said, have only “contributed to the culture of fear that’s hindering meaningful transparency and accountability.”
Last week, Mr. Grassley heralded the work of other whistle-blowers, two agents from the Internal Revenue Service who accused the Biden administration in 2023 of undercutting and slow-walking a criminal case against former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter.
In a letter to the White House, Mr. Grassley urged the Trump administration not to use the rapid downsizing of the federal work force as cover or an excuse to fire whistle-blowers.
“If that has happened, this would not only be unlawful but would also have a severe chilling effect on federal employees who would otherwise blow the whistle,” he wrote.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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