Of Trump’s many motley appointments, Emil Bove may be the most worrisome of them all | Editorial
While in an interim role at the Justice Department, Bove fired those who prosecuted Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection cases, and is accused by a whistleblower of urging colleagues to ignore court orders.
Donald Trump has surrounded himself with a long list of unqualified and morally bankrupt officials who have helped fuel the chaos and cruelty during the initial months of his second administration.
As a brief refresher, they include: Pete Hegseth (excessive drinking, carousing, texting classified war plans), Pam Bondi (election denier, corruption enabler, Jeffrey Epstein file obstructionist), and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (womanizer, vaccine skeptic, measles enabler).
The list goes on: Kash Patel (the conspiracy theorist turned hobnobbing FBI director with no prior experience running anything who vowed to close the FBI headquarters and turn it into a museum of the so-called deep state), Linda McMahon (the wrestling honcho turned education secretary with no education experience), and Kristi Noem (the dog-killing Homeland Security secretary with no counterterrorism or immigration experience who couldn’t define habeas corpus).
And on: Tulsi Gabbard (the Vladimir Putin supporter turned director of national intelligence), David Richardson (the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency who has no disaster relief experience, was unaware there was a hurricane season, and has been missing in action throughout the deadly Texas flood), and JD Vance (the 40-year-old former Trump critic whose claim to fame was writing a book about growing up poor in rural America that left out many details, but somehow now sits one heartbeat away from the presidency).
But there remains one person who has no business working in the federal government, let alone receiving a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.
That is Emil Bove III.
Trump nominated Bove to be a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Philadelphia and covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The Third Circuit is where scandal-plagued Samuel A. Alito served before being elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bove, 44, was one of Trump’s criminal defense attorneys, helping to play the deny, delay, and appeals game that ultimately fended off multiple criminal indictments that went away after the election. As a result, Trump never faced justice stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and remove classified documents — though he was convicted in a New York state case of trying to influence the 2016 election.
After the 2024 election, Trump rewarded Bove by appointing him the acting U.S. deputy attorney general. In just three months on the job, Bove sullied whatever integrity he had left and destroyed any argument for him to be confirmed a judge.
Bove fired roughly two dozen federal prosecutors who worked on the criminal cases brought against the more than 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that Trump helped to incite. Strike one.
Bove directed the U.S. Justice Department to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Critics said withdrawing the case was a quid pro quo to get Adams’ help with the mass deportation of migrants.
Bove denied that claim, but three federal prosecutors quit in protest over the decision to end the case, and the federal judge overseeing the case said dropping the charges “smacks of a bargain.” Strike two.
Bove also refused to denounce the Jan. 6 insurrection, or rule out the possibility of Trump running for a third term — even though the Constitution prohibits it. Strikes three and four.
But those law-bending outrages were just the warm-ups.
A former Justice Department lawyer accused Bove of urging colleagues to ignore any court orders that blocked Trump’s plan to deport Venezuelan migrants to an El Salvadoran prison, including Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly spirited out of the country without any due process.
According to a whistleblower complaint filed by since-fired career prosecutor Erez Reuveni, Bove told colleagues if the judge issued an order blocking the deportations, they would have to consider ignoring it and “telling the courts ‘fuck you.’”
Bove denies the claim, but internal text messages bolstered Reuveni’s version of events, which implicate Bove in both contempt of court and violating due process rights.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on Bove’s nomination on Thursday.
For senators who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, the choice is obvious: Anyone who ignores the rule of law can’t be trusted to administer it.