Welcome to the beat. Our top story is this bombshell whistleblower complaint rocking the Trump DOJ and administration.

It alleges a top Trump official said the DOJ could plot to tell the courts, FU, and ignore judicial orders that the president didn't like, which is what happens in autocratic regimes.

This is a new, damning account of an assault on the rule

of law. It comes from a very solid source, a longtime DOJ attorney who was in the room, who worked

directly for these Trump appointees, who witnessed them firsthand knowledge, strong testimony.

And this individual recounts how his refusal to lie led him to be later ousted.

The source is a detailed meticulous complaint. This is not one quote or one interview. It is now a

formal process, not unlike other whistleblowers that we've covered throughout many decades in American

life. And whistleblowers, even in this current Trump era, even if he didn't

like it and wants it to be otherwise, are legally protected. Indeed, that's one of the reasons

this is news tonight, which we'll get into, because the written complaint has been provided to

Congress and the public. And it's leading to these kind of bombshell New York Times headlines. Justice

Department leader suggested violating court orders, whistleblower says. The confession here is from

the top of the Justice Department. The now-fired DOJ lawyer, Eris Riveney, writing about this

with the emails and documents, contemporaneous accounts

as the lawyer say, to back him up. So while some people might have thought this is where Trump

wanted to go or assumed his senior aides were trying to do this at DOJ, I can tell you, as a lawyer,

as a legal journalist, as someone following this all these times, all these months.

This is the most damning inside account that they did deliberately want to violate court orders according to the whistleblow. It comes down to a senior Justice Department official,

Emil Bove, also a former Trump criminal defense lawyer, who told subordinates that he would in this clash potentially

ignore these court orders to get whatever Trump wanted. Judges be damned. The Constitution be damned.

And that means in the end, democracy and the rule of law be damned because everything we do as a country

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