Nominating Emil Bove for Appellate Court is Brazen, Even for Trump 

President Donald Trump has nominated his criminal lawyer, now a top Justice Department official, to the federal bench. Specifically, he wants the Senate to confirm Emil Bove to a lifetime appointment on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. That court gave us Samuel Alito, perhaps the most reactionary of the nine Supreme Court justices, making us wonder whether Bove, 44, may be tapped for the high court if a vacancy arises during the Trump administration. Now that Trump is in a high-profile fight with Leonard Leo, the conservative judicial activist, and the Federalist Society over some of their recommended judges balking at the Trump agenda, Bove is just the brawler and loyalist he might name to the high Court, eschewing the conservative legal establishment. 

The Bove nomination has become a lightning rod in the debate over the politicization of the federal judiciary. He has no judicial experience and is not even recognized as an appellate litigator. There are two vacancies on the Third Circuit, one in Pennsylvania and one in Delaware. Bove owns property in Pennsylvania, but it is unclear which seat he is getting the nod for.  

Bove’s supporters emphasize his close personal and professional relationship with the president, while critics warn that it’s precisely his record and close ties that threaten judicial independence and the rule of law. During the Biden administration, Bove served on the president’s personal defense team, representing Trump as he fought state and federal indictments.  

“Emil is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “He will end the Weaponization of Justice, restore the Rule of Law, and do anything else that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Emil Bove will never let you down!” 

Those close to Bove say his appointment fulfills his burning ambition to become a federal judge, a role he seems decidedly unsuited to fill. He is anything but a just-the-facts-and-follow-the-law man. In his current stint at the Department of Justice, he has proven to be a combative hatchet man defending the president’s agenda and demanding that political and career staffers align with the administration. Supporters point to Bove’s prosecutorial background, particularly his focus on national security and high-profile criminal cases, and his willingness to implement Trump’s agenda, especially immigration and law enforcement. 

But others, including conservatives, have expressed concern that Bove’s nomination reflects an overtly politicized approach to judicial appointments. It echoes Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to nominate justices to the Supreme Court who would “automatically” overrule Roe v. Wade. He did, and they did. Trump’s claim that Bove on the bench would “do whatever is necessary” to advance his agenda is a weird and highly politicized interpretation of the judicial role. 

Bove notably spearheaded the Justice Department’s move to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, which led to an earthquake of personnel upheaval in the Department of Justice as prosecutors, including ones with impeccable conservative bona fides, quit over what seemed to be a quid pro quo dismissal in return for the mayor backing the president’s immigration policies. 

The Senate must confirm Bove’s nomination, and Democrats on the judiciary committee are sharpening their knives. His Trump ties have raised serious concerns about judicial impartiality and the separation of powers. And senators will undoubtedly use the confirmation process to scrutinize his role in the administration’s failure to return a group of Venezuelan migrants being rendered to a hellhole El Salvadoran prison without due process after a federal judge told a Justice Department lawyer to have the planes carrying them turn around. 

Bove’s resumé for a high judicial post is spotty at best. A graduate of the University at Albany part of the State University of New York and the Georgetown University Law Center, he worked for nine years as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, where he was known as a tenacious prosecutor, rising to become the co-head of the unit prosecuting terrorists and international narco-traffickers. (I was a prosecutor in that office, but not when Bove was there.) As such, he was investigated and in line for a demotion for an “abusive management style,” raising questions about whether he lacks judicial temperament. He left the office for a private law firm in New Jersey. The following year, when his former U.S. Attorney’s office colleague, Todd Blanche, currently the deputy attorney general, the second most powerful position at the Justice Department, started his small firm to defend Trump in his criminal indictments, he recruited Bove to work alongside him. 

Bove was not known to be involved in Republican politics before his stint in the Justice Department. But since then, he has been the poster child for some of the DOJ’s most controversial actions, starting with a memo threatening to prosecute state and city officials who refused to carry out immigration enforcement. 

In the first weeks of the administration, Bove ordered the firing of at least eight senior FBI officials and a sweeping examination of the work of thousands of other bureau employees, including all those who worked on investigations tied to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The ousted leaders were highly seasoned managers of the bureau’s intelligence, national security, cyber-investigations, and science and technology branches. 

Bove also signed the memo that directed federal prosecutors nationwide to investigate and potentially bring criminal charges against state and local officials who don’t cooperate with the president’s plans to carry out mass deportations. 

Bove ordered Justice Department officials to dismiss the federal corruption case against Mayor Adams. That decision led to more than half a dozen veteran Justice Department attorneys resigning in protest, including Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (She was a law clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia), and most of the senior leadership of the Justice Department’s public integrity division, which prosecutes corruption crimes. That division has been decimated, is down to a skeleton staff, and will no longer have direct investigative or prosecutorial authority.  

In the Adams case, Bove stated in a letter to prosecutors that his decision was not based on the evidence or legal theories driving the prosecution. Instead, he said, the case was interfering with Adams’s ability to cooperate with Trump’s immigration enforcement endeavors and efforts to address violent crime. 

As Bove struggled to find two prosecutors to sign a motion requesting that a judge dismiss the case, he summoned the roughly two dozen remaining members of the public integrity unit and ordered them to decide who would file the dismissal motion. He made it clear that lawyers who were unwilling to do so could be fired, and those who were could be promoted, The Washington Post reported.  

Ultimately, Bove found one public integrity section attorney and another Justice Department political appointee to sign the request. In a highly unusual move, Bove appeared alone before a New York federal judge to defend the government’s decision to dismiss the case.  

“I don’t think there’s anything particularly exotic about seeking to drop the charges,” Bove told the court.  

More recently, Bove clashed with the Trump-appointed general counsel of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over whether to drop the agency’s opposition to a controversial device that allows semiautomatic weapons to be fired like machine guns. 

Bismarck said, “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable—the art of the next best.”  

It’s true. We see it unfolding before our eyes. 

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