As Democrats walk out, Republicans advance judicial nomination of Emil Bove
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday morning to advance President Donald Trump’s controversial judicial nominee Emil Bove amid objections from Democratic senators, who walked out of the hearing in protest before the vote.
Bove, a top Justice Department official nominated to serve on U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, must now be approved by the full Senate.
Bove faced whistleblower allegations ahead of the vote that he suggested to subordinates at a Justice Department meeting they may need to defy a court order that could have hampered the president’s aggressive deportation efforts. The principal associate deputy attorney general has also been at the center of the department’s most controversial actions during the Trump administration, including a push to drop federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
The Justice Department and Bove, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense attorney, denied any wrongdoing.
Senate Democrats have hoped that the whistleblower allegations would sink Bove’s nomination. But so far the allegations — and documentation supporting some of the accusations against Bove — have done little to sway their Republican colleagues.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and is considered an advocate for whistleblowers, has so far refused Democratic requests to hold a hearing with the whistleblower.
The whistleblower, former Justice Department prosecutor Erez Reuveni, was fired after he admitted at a court hearing that the administration mistakenly deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego García to a prison in El Salvador, despite a previous court order barring his removal to that country.
“Even if we accept most of the claims as true, there’s no scandal here,” Grassley said at the hearing Thursday. “Government lawyers aggressively litigating and interpreting court orders isn’t misconduct, it’s what lawyers do all the time.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and other senators were frustrated at the hearing that Grassley wouldn’t let them all speak and continue debate ahead of the vote. Every Democrat in attendance walked out together.
“We are jamming this through under some sense of false urgency. It’s just wrong,” Booker said, calling the entire nomination process a “sham.”
In the end, all 12 of the Republicans on the committee voted to advance Bove. Democrats had hoped they could convince Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to vote against Bove’s lifetime appointment to the bench. Tillis — who is not running for reelection — had voted against Ed Martin to be the D.C. U.S. attorney, forcing the White House to pull his nomination.
Tillis has said he would not approve nominees who supported the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Bove was involved in the ousting of Justice Department attorneys and staffers who worked on the prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters. But Tillis was firm in his support of Bove and clarified from the dais Thursday that he would not support nominees who condoned the violence against police officers on Jan. 6.
Ahead of the vote, more than 900 former Justice Department attorneys signed a letter to the senators expressing alarm over Bove’s nomination. The attorneys accused Bove of ignoring constitutional principals and longtime Justice Department norms as he fired employees and pursued legal strategies in the name of the president’s politics, citing his push to drop the Adams case.
“Mr. Bove’s trampling over institutional norms in this case, and in others, sent shockwaves through the ranks-cratering morale, triggering mass departures, and eroding the effectiveness of DOJ’s vital work,” the letter states. “Prosecutorial authority carries profound consequences on individuals’ lives and the integrity of our public institutions; wielding it without impartiality is a flagrant abuse of that power. Because impartiality is also a cornerstone of the judiciary, any failure to exercise it at DOJ must be carefully considered.”
In response, Todd Blanche, the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general, wrote an op-ed on Fox News in support of Bove, calling the allegations against him part of a “smear campaign.”
“For those who insist on rehashing internal dissent and resignations, it should be obvious that disagreements within the Department do not render a decision unlawful or unethical,” Blanche wrote as he defended Bove’s successful push to drop Adams’s prosecution in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). “To the contrary, Emil’s integrity was displayed when he himself argued the case in favor of dismissal, even as his former colleagues in SDNY retreated.”