Senate confirms controversial Trump nominee Emil Bove as federal judge
The Senate voted Tuesday night to confirm Emil Bove as a federal appeals court judge, ending a contentious confirmation in which the top Justice Department official and former attorney for Donald Trump was the target of three whistleblower complaints alleging he put the president’s agenda above legal principles.
The 50-49 vote giving Bove a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit was mostly along party lines, with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) joining Democrats in voting against Bove. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) was not in attendance and did not vote.
Bove has been the most controversial of the 15 judges whom Trump has nominated to date in his second term, with Senate Democrats and three whistleblowers saying he is unfit for a job in which he would be expected to make judicial rulings without consideration of politics.
The president formally nominated Bove—who represented Trump in three of the four criminal cases against him—in June for the court, which takes cases from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands. His nomination had been on a faster timeline than most, and Democrats complained that the speedy process did not allow for ample debate, walking out of a hearing on his nomination because Republicans would not allow more discussion.
Hundreds of former prosecutors wrote a letter urging the Senate to reject Bove’s nomination, calling him “the worst conceivable nominee.”
Bove has played a central role in the Trump administration’s efforts to fire career prosecutors and in crafting its legal strategy on immigration. Two whistleblowers accused him of telling subordinates in a March meeting that they may need to ignore court orders that would hamper Trump’s campaign to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. One of them, Erez Reuveni, who was fired from the Justice Department in April, went public with his account.
A third whistleblower shared evidence with lawmakers that Bove misled them during his confirmation hearing last month about his handling of the dismissal of public corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, which led to the ouster of prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York and the Justice Department’s public integrity section. Aides to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, met with the third whistleblower’s lawyers Monday to review the allegations.
“Since it seems very likely Mr. Bove lied to senators, he never should become a federal judge,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said after the vote, calling it a “dark day.”
Bove’s record convinced Collins that she should not support him. “Mr. Bove’s political profile and some of the actions he has taken in his leadership roles at the Department of Justice cause me to conclude he would not serve as an impartial jurist,” Collins said in a statement.
Other Republicans were not persuaded.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) helped to sink Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee to be U.S. attorney for D.C., because of Martin’s support for the pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But Tillis said he was not persuaded by the accusations against Bove and faulted the third whistleblower for not sharing evidence with the committee earlier.
“If I get any recommendation to move forward and speak to a whistleblower then I’d be open to that,” Tillis told reporters before the vote. “But I’m not going to do it as a one-off. I think that we have to follow the committee process and make sure that whistleblower has at least attempted to reach out and have a meeting with the committee staff or the chair.”
Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.
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