An inane concerted attack on me last week by senior Department of Justice officials foreshadowed Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that he will nominate Emil Bove to a seat on the Third Circuit. Bove has served in the Department of Justice since Inauguration Day, first as acting Deputy Attorney General, then as a top aide to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Along with Blanche, Bove previously represented Trump in various of the criminal prosecutions brought against him. He also worked for nine years as a federal prosecutor.
Some people whose judgment I respect say that they think Bove is a good pick for the seat. I hope that they are right. But I see ample reason to believe otherwise. I’ll outline my concerns here and offer some related observations.
1. In his four months at DOJ, Bove has distinguished himself (as the New York Times puts it) as one of DOJ’s “most formidable and feared political appointees” and as the “main enforcer of Mr. Trump’s demands for retribution.” One of his most thuggish admirers praises him for being “a savage” and “mean.”
Bove’s bullying mishandling of the Trump administration’s decision to dismiss the prosecution of New York City mayor Eric Adams elicited a scolding from a federal judge. (Yes, the judge is a left-wing Biden appointee, but that’s no answer to his reasoning, and it also makes it all the more foolish for Bove to have handled the matter so clumsily that he gave the judge an opportunity to probe his pretexts.) That fiasco also led to the resignations of the interim United States Attorney whom Bove himself had selected, another prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and at least five prosecutors in the criminal division and public-integrity office at Main DOJ.
There is of course much that is opaque about the relationship between the White House and DOJ, but it sure appears that Bove has been White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s implementer and enforcer on whatever bad idea crosses Miller’s mind. Bove’s admirers call him “fearless,” but the same could be said of mafia henchmen. Has Bove ever had the courage to challenge one of Miller’s bad ideas? Or to tell him that his tweet rants undercut DOJ in court? Or to stop him from interfering with Solicitor General John Sauer?
2. Like many bullies, Bove can dish it out but can’t take it. He’s happy to disrupt people’s lives by firing them on the spot. But he melted into a puddle in the face of a much less severe disruption:
In 2016, during a corruption investigation into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2013 campaign fund-raising, an F.B.I. agent surprised Mr. Bove’s wife, a policy adviser to the mayor, with a request that she turn over records of her communications, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
(There was no allegation of wrongdoing by Mr. Bove’s wife, and Mr. de Blasio was never charged.)
Mr. Bove believed that approach, while not technically improper, was too aggressive and needlessly traumatized his family. He made it clear that he had only wanted a heads-up and would never have tipped off his wife beforehand.
His superiors countered by saying that alerting him could have potentially compromised a sensitive political investigation.
His reaction was instant and emotional. He briefly considered quitting, and was so upset that he took several days off to clear his head. That did not sit well with some of his colleagues who believed he had overreacted, those people said. [Underlining added.]
(Please don’t tell me that Bove was just standing up for his wife. Many of the lawyers he abruptly fired surely have spouses and families that were “needlessly traumatized.” And if he “would never have tipped off his wife beforehand,” how would her experience have been any different?)
3. The oh-so-“fearless” Bove “has not publicly acknowledged any role in enforcement efforts” after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, even though he was an eager participant in the January 6 investigations and “repeatedly expressed determination to help federal prosecutors in Washington in any way he could.” From the Wall Street Journal:
[Bove] quickly tangled with interim FBI leaders he helped select, as he tried to build a list of names of all personnel who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. When acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll wouldn’t immediately give him names of agents in Washington who worked on the probe, Bove called him insubordinate and ordered a bureauwide list. He ordered eight senior FBI officials to resign or be fired and gave them four days to decide.
The Jan. 6 requests came despite Bove himself having played a role in the probe. In 2021, as a supervisor at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, he pushed for his office to have a greater role in the investigation, people who worked with him said.
Bove “never voiced any apprehension about the investigations we were doing or the conduct of any agent or task force officer who was leading those investigations and arrests,” said Christopher O’Leary, who was a senior counterterrorism agent in the New York field office at the time.
4. In sum, I have serious doubts that Bove has the character and integrity to be worthy of confirmation as a federal judge. I hope very much that my doubts prove to be ill-founded.
5. On a much lesser note, I doubt very much that Bove would be an effective federal appellate judge. His background (if there weren’t other disqualifiers) would suit him much better for a district-court seat, and “his brusque, fist-pounding approach” (WSJ) isn’t likely to make him influential with his colleagues.
6. There is also the danger that Bove, if confirmed, would leap to the top of Trump’s list for the next Supreme Court vacancy. If you think that’s farfetched, look to what Trump himself proclaimed when he announced the nomination:
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! [Underlining added.]
Republican senators who have the foresight and sense to prevent this scenario should defeat Bove’s nomination.