But His Emils

Emil Bove III, Trump’s hatchet-man in the Justice Department, is now an appellate court judge of the Third Circuit.

Emil Bove III is confirmed as a judge on the Third Circuit. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM.

The GOP-controlled Senate demonstrated once again that they are willing to abdicate their constitutional duty by ramming through and rubber stamping one of the worst—if not the worst—judicial appointment in our nation’s history: Trump’s erstwhile personal criminal attorney, Emil Bove III.

The vote was 50-49, with one GOP absence and only two GOP defectors (Sens. Collins (R-ME) and Murkowski (R-AK)), despite everything we know about Bove and how damaging to the basic rule of law he has already been.

It’s important to be clear-eyed about the lackey the Senate actually just approved, just as it was important to understand the deplorable nature of Trump’s other successful nominees. Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr., for example, are turning out as bad or worse than Democrats had warned, leading GOP senators to admit they were wrong to confirm them.

For the sake of demonstrating later that we were correct to warn everyone today, let’s sift through the destructive rubble Emil Bove III has already created as he took a sledgehammer to the pillars of our constitutional governance. Then let’s assess what his lifetime appointment to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals could mean. Spoiler: There’s a bit of a silver lining here.

Prosecuting the January 6 prosecutors

At the beginning of Trump’s second term, Bove served as the acting head of the Justice Department before Pam Bondi was confirmed as the new Attorney General. Bove used that temporary position to begin to insert raw partisan politics into what should have been non-political law enforcement. As the Los Angeles Times noted,

Before this year, the Justice Department held to a tradition of keeping politics out of law enforcement. But Bove and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi saw their missions as carrying out the wishes of President Trump.

One of Bove’s most outrageous moves was to go after, on Trump’s behalf, the FBI prosecutors and agents who had anything to do with the January 6 criminal investigations and prosecutions. These even included cases against dangerous criminal insurrectionists and rioters. As the LA Times reported, Bove laid out

plans for retribution against the prosecutors and investigators who brought charges against him or the 1,500 Trump allies who stormed the Capitol and fought with police.

Specifically, as CBS reported in February, Bove ordered the FBI to compile a list of all current and former employees who were assigned “at any time” to a January 6 investigation. The purpose was “to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary,” according to an internal department memo. Agents across the country were asked to complete questionnaires about their involvement in the January 6 and Trump probes as part of a department-wide “evaluation” of the workforce.

This was manifestly unfair and improper. Whatever your “politics” around January 6, punishing FBI employees who were simply assigned to work on these cases amounted to gross political retribution. Bove intentionally targeted civil servants who were properly seeking to hold Trump and others accountable for their crimes.

It cannot be understated what kind of immediate and long-lasting chill this placed on the Justice Department and FBI. Bove’s message was clear: If you work on any case against Trump or his supporters, your job will be on the line whenever the GOP next returns to power. This policy was designed to undercut federal law enforcement’s ability to hold future criminal politicians accountable. Along with the blessing from the Supreme Court that presidents have immunity from prosecution for all official actions, Bove’s attack on the frontline prosecutors and agents has encouraged violations of the law today and empowered those who choose to do it.

Per the same reporting in the LA Times, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who opposed Bove’s nomination along with every other Senate Democrat, drew attention to how this move also ratified the violent mob’s behavior and attack on police officers on January 6:

“When Trump wanted to purge the department of prosecutors who had proved to juries beyond a reasonable doubt that the violent offenders who attacked police officers that day did so to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power, Emil Bove was there to punish not the criminals, but the prosecutors.”

Together with Trump’s mass pardon of the January 6 defendants, undoing years of arduous investigative work and lengthy court trials with tens of thousands of work and jury hours, Bove helped drive the point home: The Justice Department is now nothing more than a tool for Trump to use against his political enemies.

Brokering the corrupt Eric Adams deal

Bove remained Trump’s No. 3 at the Justice Department after Bondi was confirmed. In that position, he continued to train his sights not on criminal defendants but on the prosecutors who had obtained indictments against them. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the case of New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

As I wrote about back in February, federal prosecutors indicted Adams in 2024 for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bribery and for soliciting and accepting illegal campaign contributions and bribes from wealthy Turkish nationals.

Desperate to get out from under the federal charges, Adams went to Trump and claimed that he, too, was a “victim” of overzealous prosecutors and the Biden administration. Adams “praised parts of Trump’s agenda, visited him near his Mar-a-Lago compound and attended his inauguration a few days later,” according to the New York Times.

Adams’s shameless obsequiousness was rewarded not long after. In a memo, Bove directed the lead prosecutor on the Adams case, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon, to cease all further investigations of Adams until her successor was confirmed by the Senate.

Bove’s rationale? The charges “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’s ability to devote full attention and resources” to Trump’s efforts to crack down on migrants” and had “improperly interfered” with Adams’s re-election campaign. In short, Bove provided political justifications for dropping the charges, with no rationales related to the actual facts, evidence or law of the case.

Sassoon, who is herself a conservative Federalist Society member, bravely and famously pushed back in an eight-page letter for the ages to Attorney General Pam Bondi, methodically demolishing Bove’s assertions in the memo. And she inserted what has become known simply as Footnote 1, which law students one day will study in ethics courses:

I attended a meeting on January 31, 2025, with Mr. Bove, Adams’s counsel, and members of my office. Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed. Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion.

Bove took this badly. He not only fired back at Sassoon on Bondi’s behalf, blasting her handling of the case and her decision to disobey a direct order, he also put other prosecutors who had worked with her on leave. He threatened her whole team with investigations—once more creating a chill across the Department after one had already washed over it with the January 6 internal department witch-hunts.

In his response, Bove managed to fit in a wince-inducing pledge of fealty to Trump that gets the oath of office completely backwards: “In no valid sense do you uphold the Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President,” he wrote, “and anyone romanticizing that behavior does a disservice to the nature of this work and the public’s perception of our efforts.”

With Sassoon and her team off the case, Bove tried to send the matter to the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department in D.C., but the two heads of that section quit. Bove then went down the chain of command, and it was quit, quit, quit. This became the “Thursday Afternoon Massacre” resulting in six public resignations, including Sassoon’s.

Pressuring DOJ to defy court orders

The most recent “Bove trove” comprises whistle-blower complaints and exhibits from within the Justice Department. The most comprehensive of these was filed by Erez Reuveni, a respected career attorney with 15 years of experience in the department. He alleged that Bove was one of the principal proponents of a plan within the Department to defy the courts.

As I wrote about back in June, Reuveni filed a 35-page complaint after being terminated for refusing to sign his name to a brief that contained untrue allegations about Kilmar Abrego García, who was finally returned to the U.S. from illegal rendition to and imprisonment in El Salvador.

In a meeting on March 14, Bove informed his subordinates that Trump was going to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to fly a group of immigrants out of the country. Bove told them that the planes needed to take off no matter what. Reuveni’s complaint then dropped this bombshell:

“Bove stated that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order. Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room.”

The White House dismissed these allegations as the rantings of a disgruntled employee, but Reuveni produced email and text receipts to back up his claims.

A second person then came forward with information just before the Senate vote to confirm Bove. As The Hill reported,

A second whistleblower has now stepped forward to back Reuveni’s claims, saying Bove and other senior DOJ officials were “actively and deliberately undermining the rule of law.”

“Our client, whose identity we are protecting, has provided substantive, internal DOJ documents to the Inspector General, supporting former senior DOJ attorney-turned whistleblower Erez Reuveni’s allegations,” Whistleblower Aid, the group representing the second whistleblower, said in a press release.

“Reuveni’s whistleblower complaint exposes ‘high-level governmental personnel [at the DOJ who] knowingly and willfully defied court orders, directed their subordinate attorneys to make misrepresentations to courts, and engaged in a scheme to withhold relevant information from the court to advance the Administration’s priority of deporting noncitizens.’”

As an official near the top of the chain of command within the Department of Justice, Bove could be found in contempt for defying Judge James Boasberg’s direct order to turn planes bearing migrants around before they landed in El Salvador. That investigation is still pending.

From corrupt Justice Department to compromised judiciary

The twist in the plot is this: Now that he is a federal judge with a lifetime appointment, Bove may eventually have to face a federal contempt of court investigation and possible charges as a member of the judiciary. And Trump may have to consider pulling out his pardon autopen for his former personal criminal attorney. Given whom else Trump has pardoned or is considering pardoning (including convicted sex trafficker and Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell), we shouldn’t think for a moment that Trump wouldn’t do it for his own attorney.

Apart from possible criminal contempt charges, a stronger case for a House impeachment of a member of the federal judiciary hardly exists, and that’s with Justice Clarence Thomas vying for the top spot. While this Senate would almost certainly never convict and remove Bove given the need for 67 votes, for the sake of the rule of law the House Judiciary Committee should open investigations into Bove if the Democrats regain control of that chamber after the 2026 midterms.

But at least he can do less harm…?

I promised you a silver lining to this depressing tale, and it is this: As a Trump appointee on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the U.S. Virgin Islands (ahem), the ability of Bove to do real damage will be more constrained than it was while he held No. 3 stop at the Justice Department. Going forward, Bove’s will be one voice among many, and he can still be outvoted 2-1 on any panel.

We should be on the lookout, however, for any plans to elevate Bove to a justice on the Supreme Court at the next retirement. He would be a more reliably fascist and anti-Constitutional vote than even Justices Alito or Thomas.

As he made clear in his letter to Sassoon, there is no daylight in Bove’s mind between the Constitution and the Presidency. The former is there to serve the latter, end of story, assuming of course the latter is Trump or another MAGA Republican. And that’s about as upside down a view of constitutional law as you can arrive at, whether you’re inside the Justice Department or on the bench in the Third Circuit.