In our latest examination of the circuit court nominee and Supreme
Court frontrunner, we examine his profanity, dissembling, and loyalty to
Dear Leader.
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Emil
Bove III: The man who allegedly told Justice Department lawyers they
might need to tell federal judges "f--- you" is now nominated for a
lifetime appointment to the bench he once suggested defying. Here,
president Donald Trump's nominee to be United States Circuit Judge for
the Third Circuit, is sworn in before testifying during his confirmation
hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office
Building on Wednessday, June 25, 2025. Credit: Associated Press
President Donald Trump has nominated his
criminal lawyer, now a top Justice Department official, to sit on the
Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. This
influential court gave us Samuel Alito, perhaps the most reactionary of
the nine Supreme Court justices. This makes us wonder whether Bove may fill the next SCOTUS vacancy if one arises during the Trump administration. Now that Trump has gotten into verbal fisticuffs with conservative legal activists like Leonard Leo,
who did so much to guide his first-term picks for the Supreme Court,
he’s likely to tap a loyalist over someone with Federalist Society
chops. This is MAGA 2.0 where loyalty is a value second to none.
Bove fits the bill as someone who couldn’t pass muster with Leonard
Leo, Bill Barr, or Mike Pence in the first term as a judicial nominee.
The State University of New York/Albany and Georgetown University Law
Center graduate has no prior judicial experience and is not even noted
as an appellate litigator. In his split second stint at the Department
of Justice, he’s been a combative Trump loyalist, defending the 47th president’s agenda and demanding that political and career staffers toe the line.
The Bove nomination has become the cynosure of the politicization of
the federal judiciary. Bove’s record and close ties to Trump threaten
judicial independence and the rule of law.
“Emil is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone,” Trump posted 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!”
Trump’s claim that Bove on the bench would “do anything… necessary” to advance his MAGA agenda is a bizarre interpretation of the judicial role.
Bove’s close personal and professional ties to Trump have raised
serious concerns about judicial impartiality and the separation of
powers. And hopefully, senators, who must confirm any judicial
nominees, will scrutinize his role in dispatching Venezuelan migrants to
a hellhole Salvadoran prison without due process even after a federal
judge told a Justice Department lawyer to have the plane carrying them
turned around.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Bove sparred with Senator Adam Schiff, the California Democrat, over whistleblower allegations
that he told Justice Department lawyers that the agency may have to say
“Fuck you” to a federal court to carry out the Trump administration’s
deportation agenda.
Under oath, Bove prevaricated, telling Schiff that he did not recall
making such comments, although he didn’t deny it. Schiff, a former
prosecutor, challenged Bove’s credibility:
“If you said or suggested during a meeting with Justice
Department lawyers that they should consider telling the court ‘Fuck
you,’ it seems to me that would be something you’d remember…
“I don’t remember” is a shopworn ploy for witness evasion. Trump’s
mentor, the disgraced lawyer Roy Cohn, used to tell his clients about to
testify before the grand jury, “It’s no crime not to remember.”
MAGA senators would surely give Bove the benefit of the doubt. Maybe
he didn’t say “fuck the courts.” Or, if he did, it’s no worse than Trump
using the same barnyard epithet to carp at “Israel and Iran for not
knowing what the fuck they are doing.” But then the shit hits the fan. Just before the hearing, Erez Reuveni, a recently fired DOJ lawyer, filed a whistleblower complaint accusing
Bove of directing his subordinates to resist court orders blocking
Trump deportations. According to Reuveni, Bove said that, if necessary,
DOJ would say “fuck you” to the courts to get planes loaded with
deportees on their way.
But it was hard to imagine why Reuveni would have risked taking on
such a powerful and pugilistic figure as Bove if he didn’t have proof.
Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat, produced a
trove of emails, texts, and phone records
confirming that more than one person in the room, including Reuveni’s
then supervisor August Flentje, Deputy Director of the Office of
Immigration Litigation in DOJ’s Civil Division, who heard Bove’s torrent
of profanity, and they discussed it among themselves afterward.
One email from March 16, the day after three planeloads of men who
would be deposited in CECOT prison in El Salvador took off, demonstrates
just how complicit senior leadership at the DOJ is in Trump’s defiance
of the rule of law. The acting head of the DOJ’s Civil Division wrote to
Reuveni and two others. He advised that Bove gave DHS approval to turn
over the men on the planes to El Salvadoran custody after D.C.
federal Judge James Boasberg told the government during the hearing that
the aircraft needed to turn around and return to the United States. His
bogus rationale was that the planes had already left American airspace
before the Judge could get a written order. Lawyers owe a duty of candor
to the court. An ethical lawyer would never dream of distinguishing
between the stature of a written order and the command of a judicial
order made in open court.
The emails confirm that Reuveni repeatedly told his colleagues that
only people on the planes with final deportation orders could be
deplaned and that everyone else must be returned to the United States.
“The Judge specifically ordered us,” he wrote, not to remove anyone in
the class, which included Venezuelans who were allegedly gang members
being deported to custody in El Salvador. When Reuveni admitted in open
court, as his duty required him to do, that the government made an
“administrative error” in deporting the Venezuelans, he was fired.
To put it mildly, Bove lacked candor in his Senate Judiciary
Committee testimony. The evidence shows that the Justice Department has
abandoned its constitutional duty to ensure the executive branch follows
court orders. With this administration, politics reigns supreme.
Instead of being ministers of justice, high-ranking officials of the
Justice Department are like so many North Korean generals flanking the
supreme leader.
Bove carries other dirty baggage. He notably spearheaded the Justice Department’s move to dismiss corruption charges
against New York Mayor Eric Adams, which led to a tsunami of personnel
upheaval in the Department, including the high-profile resignation of a
top prosecutor in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern
District of New York and a former Antonin Scalia clerk who was heading
up the investigation of Adams and could not stomach the case being
dropped
Until Bove, I thought Trump’s nomination of Ed Martin as the top
federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia was his worst. Martin, a
“Stop the Steal” activist, had overseen a purge of prosecutors who
worked on criminal cases stemming from the January 6, 2021, attack on
the U.S. Capitol. At least, Martin could be fired and would only serve
for the life of Trump’s administration. (He never made it past acting
U.S. attorney in D.C. but picked up the Justice Department job, not
requiring Senate confirmation, of scrutinizing what the MAGA toadies
call Joe Biden’s weaponization of the Department. (Fox meets hen house.)
But I was blown away by Bove, 44, who was nominated for a lifetime
appointment to the Third Circuit, and in the batter’s box to ascend to
the Supreme Court and do Trump’s bidding.
Emil Bove, make no mistake about it, is on a fast track to the
Supreme Court. He is loyal to a fault, but to him justice is a game and a
political weapon. The country deserves another Brandeis, but Trump is
giving us another Roy Cohn.
This is undoubtedly the most curious judicial nomination in history—a
lawyer who believes he can “fuck the courts.” Nevertheless, Bove is
expected to be confirmed.