Senate, rejecting whistleblower alarms, confirms Bove to Appeals Court

WASHINGTON – The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Emil Bove III, a Trump loyalist whose short tenure in the top ranks of the Justice Department prompted whistleblower complaints and a storm of criticism from agency veterans, to a powerful federal appeals court judgeship.

Bove had sparked outcries at the department by directing or overseeing the firing of dozens of employees and ordering the dismissal of bribery charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. According to one whistleblower who went public, Bove also told government lawyers that they might ignore court orders in pursuit of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy goals.

Bove has denied being anyone’s enforcer or henchman, but his nomination to a lifetime appointment one rung below the Supreme Court provoked an intense battle in the Senate. His approval to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, came by a tiny margin, 50-49, with all Democrats and two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, opposing him.

Still, the confirmation of Bove provided at least a tacit Senate endorsement of the president’s efforts to bend the justice system to his will. Most Republicans shrugged off concerns that Bove, 44 and a defense lawyer for Trump in his Manhattan criminal trial last year, had undermined the traditional independence of the Justice Department or aided in Trump’s standoffs with the courts.

The day before Bove’s confirmation hearing, Erez Reuveni, a former immigration lawyer at the department, came forward to assert that Bove had told subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill the president’s aggressive deportation promises.

In recent days, two more would-be whistleblowers signaled they had additional derogatory information about Bove, according to lawmakers and advocates. One of those individuals suggested that Bove was untruthful in at least one of his answers about his efforts to dismiss the Adams case, while another has offered information to the Justice Department inspector general that would seem to support some of Reuveni’s claims.

Though his time as a senior Justice Department official was relatively brief, Bove played an outsize role in the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to take control of the agency it argues has been “weaponized” against Trump and other conservatives.

Because his position did not require Senate confirmation, Bove was among the first Trump appointees to arrive at the department, overseeing a succession of major policy and personnel moves, starting with a memo threatening to prosecute state and city officials who refused to carry out immigration enforcement.

But the most defining episode of his tenure was the battle he waged against the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, where he once worked, over the administration’s insistence on dropping bribery charges against Adams – who had personally appealed to the White House for a legal reprieve.

Bove pressured top prosecutors in the office to drop the case. He claimed that the charges had been brought by an overzealous U.S. attorney appointed by President Joe Biden, and he argued that the case would hinder Adams’ capacity to cooperate with the White House on immigration enforcement.

The Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, resigned rather than sign off on Bove’s command. Other career prosecutors in the public integrity section resigned rather than accede to his demands.

Bove’s current boss, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who also served with him on Trump’s legal team, accused Bove’s critics of spreading slander and misinformation.

“Emil is the most capable and principled lawyer I have ever known,” Blanche wrote in an opinion article for Fox News. “His legal acumen is extraordinary, and his moral clarity is above reproach.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.