Senate confirms Trump lawyer Emil Bove for federal appeals court judge spot — pushing past whistleblower claims

The Senate confirmed former Trump lawyer Emil Bove 50-49 for a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge Tuesday as Republicans dismissed whistleblower complaints about his conduct at the Justice Department.

A former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove was on Trump’s legal team during his New York hush money trial and defended Trump in the two federal criminal cases. He will serve on the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Democrats have vehemently opposed Bove’s nomination, citing his current position as a top Justice Department official and his role in the dismissal of the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. They have also criticized his efforts to investigate department officials who were involved in the prosecutions of hundreds of Trump supporters who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Bove has accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the attack and ordered the firing of a group of prosecutors involved in those Jan. 6 criminal cases.

Democrats have also cited evidence from two whistleblowers, a fired department lawyer who said earlier this month that Bove had suggested the Trump administration may need to ignore judicial commands — a claim that Bove denies — and new evidence from a whistleblower who did not go public. That whistleblower recently provided an audio recording of Bove that runs contrary to some of his testimony at his confirmation hearing last month, according to two people familiar with the recording.

The audio is from a private video conference call at the Department of Justice in February in which Bove, a top official at the department, discussed his handling of the dismissed case against Adams, according to transcribed quotes from the audio reviewed by The Associated Press.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the whistleblower has not made the recording public. The whistleblower’s claims were first reported by the Washington Post.

None of that evidence has so far been enough to sway Senate Republicans — all but two of them voted to confirm Bove as GOP senators have deferred to Trump on virtually all of his picks.

At his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Bove addressed criticism of his tenure head-on, telling lawmakers he understands some of his decisions “have generated controversy.” But Bove said he has been inaccurately portrayed as Trump’s “henchman” and “enforcer” at the department.

Senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing asked Bove about the February 14 call with lawyers in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which had received significant public attention because of his unusual directive that the attorneys had an hour to decide among themselves who would agree to file on the department’s behalf the motion to dismiss the case against Adams.

The call was convened amid significant upheaval in the department as prosecutors in New York who’d handled the matter, as well as some in Washington, resigned rather than agree to dispense with the case.

According to the transcript of the February call, Bove remarked near the outset that interim Manhattan US Attorney Danielle Sassoon “resigned about ten minutes before we were going to put her on leave pending an investigation.” But when asked at the hearing whether he had opened the meeting by emphasizing that Sassoon and another prosecutor had refused to follow orders and that Sassoon was going to be reassigned before she resigned, Bove answered with a simple, “No.”

At another moment, Bove said he did not recall saying words that the transcript of the call reflects him as having said — that whoever signed the motion to dismiss the Adams case would emerge as leaders of the section.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Tuesday that he believes Bove will be a “diligent, capable and fair jurist.”

He said his staff had tried to investigate the claims but that lawyers for the whistleblowers would not give them all of the materials they had asked for. The “vicious rhetoric, unfair accusations and abuse directed at Mr. Bove” have “crossed the line,” Grassley said.

The first whistleblower complaint against Bove came from a former Justice Department lawyer who was fired in April after conceding in court that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who had been living in Maryland, was mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison.

That lawyer, Erez Reuveni, described efforts by top Justice Department officials in the weeks before his firing to stonewall and mislead judges to carry out deportations championed by the White House.

Reuveni described a Justice Department meeting in March concerning Trump’s plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act over what the president claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Reuveni said Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could happen. Reuveni claims Bove used a profanity in saying the department would need to consider telling the courts what to do and “ignore any such order,” Reuveni’s lawyers said in the filing.

Bove said he has “no recollection of saying anything of that kind.”