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https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/29/senate-confirms-emil-bove-to- third-circuit-as-dems-fail-to-thwart-trump-pick-00482965

Emil Bove, President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, has
been confirmed to a lifetime seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals —
the culmination of a tumultuous campaign from his detractors that
ultimately fractured his support among the Senate GOP.

The Senate voted 50-49 to confirm Bove, with Republican Sens. Susan
Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska defecting from the rest of
their party to join all Democrats in opposing.

Bove was plagued by reports of whistleblowers alleging that he recommended
the administration ignore court orders that would disrupt Trump’s
aggressive immigration agenda. His nomination became a flashpoint battle
for Democrats, who argued the current principal associate deputy attorney general had made clear he valued fealty to the president over the law and
was therefore unfit for the federal bench.

“Look at his record: Emil Bove has shown time and time again his
disrespect for the very office he seeks to hold,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), pointing to the whistleblower’s allegations, during a recent
speech on the Senate floor. “I don’t know of another case I have seen in
my 14 years in the Senate where someone so unqualified for the bench is
before us.”

Booker was among Bove’s chief antagonists, with New Jersey being among the states from where the newly-confirmed judge would hear appeals — along
with Delaware, Pennsylvania and the Virgin Islands.

Trump has long taken pride in his selections for the federal judiciary, of which there were hundreds during his first term, and he has also indicated
he expects from his judges, in turn, a degree of loyalty. That pressure
has only become more acute during Trump’s second term, as he has taken to targeting federal judges who have presented obstacles to his
administration’s agenda.

In plenty of ways, Bove fits the mold of Trump judicial nominees. But
Bove’s allegiance to Trump goes deeper than those of Trump’s previous
judicial picks. Before joining the DOJ as a top agency official, Bove represented Trump in criminal probes around the retention of classified documents and efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

The cases were ultimately dismissed after Trump’s 2024 electoral victory,
and not long after, some of his onetime attorneys, including Bove, joined
the upper ranks of his administration. Todd Blanche, who worked with Bove
on those cases, is now deputy attorney general.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a brief interview last week he
had urged his Democratic colleagues to make the case, as a party on the
Senate floor, to the American people that Bove was unfit for the lifetime appointment due to his record and his loyalty to Trump.

“Essentially, it’s loyalty to Donald Trump … despite all of these utterly sickening failing[s],” Blumenthal said.

Democrats devoted significant time and resources to fighting the Bove nomination, from floor speeches to remarks at their weekly press
conference led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

They pointed to Bove’s role in the dismissal of federal corruption charges against Eric Adams — a move that prompted questions over whether the
Democratic mayor of New York City had engaged in a quid pro quo to have
the case dropped in exchange for cooperating with federal immigration enforcement officials at the Rikers jail facility. Democrats also decried Bove’s role in the dismissal of prosecutors who worked on cases in the
Biden administration tied to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Judiciary Committee Democrats also staged a protest, walking out of the committee markup to advance the Bove nomination when committee chair Chuck Grassley said he would pause proceedings rather than allow members of the minority party to continue airing their grievances. At one point, Sen.
Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) shouted that the committee had devolved into a “kangaroo court.”

Three whistleblowers also came forward over the course of Bove’s
confirmation process to lodge allegations against the nominee. Erez
Reuveni, a former Justice Department official who worked with Bove,
detailed Bove’s recommendation to defy the immigration court orders.
Democrats sought to hold a hearing where Reuveni could testify under oath. Grassley declined the request, and doubled down on the Senate floor
Tuesday against insinuations that he was shirking his responsibility to thoroughly vet Bove’s credentials.

“No one can say that I don’t take whistleblower complaints seriously, or
that I don’t investigate allegations in good faith,” said Grassley, the 91-year-old co-founder of the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus.
“I’ve always said that my door is open to whistleblowers, and my efforts regarding the Bove nomination show this is true.”

A second whistleblower, represented by the nonprofit group Whistleblower
Aid, claimed to support the complaint, while Grassley’s staff met with attorneys for a third whistleblower Monday. Democrats said this was
further proof that Bove’s nomination should be reconsidered — but Grassley countered that Democrats had mishandled the whistleblower’s allegations
and questioned the late timing, given a final vote on Bove was poised to
take place in the coming days.

“My message to the three whistleblowers is this: just because I may
disagree with the conclusions in a whistleblower disclosure, it doesn’t
mean that I don’t support a whistleblower’s right to come forward,”
Grassley said Tuesday.

Democrats’ case against Bove resonated with Collins, who has split with
Trump on a number of nominees more than seven months into the president’s second term.

“We have to have judges who will adhere to the rule of law and the
Constitution and do so regardless of what their personal views may be,”
she said in a statement. “Mr. Bove’s political profile and some of the
actions he has taken in his leadership roles at the Department of Justice
cause me to conclude he would not serve as an impartial jurist.”

But Democrats ultimately couldn’t peel off the two other Republicans
necessary to thwart Bove’s confirmation. Republicans could have lost up to three senators in and still confirmed the nominee with Vice President JD
Vance as the tiebreaking vote. Among the other potential defectors, Sen.
Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), member of the Judiciary panel, had effectively sunk
the confirmation chances for Trump’s previous U.S. attorney nominee for
the District of Columbia. But in the case of Bove, Tillis said he was
hesitant to place weight in the anonymous complaints.

Senate Judiciary ranking member Dick Durbin said he was not surprised by
Bove’s inevitable confirmation. He pointed to the fact that Attorney
General Pam Bondi made an appearance in person at his confirmation hearing
— an unusual move for a judicial nominee that underscored the pressure Republicans were under to endorse Trump’s pick.

Still, he decried the lack of Republican interest in getting to the bottom
of the allegations against Bove: “They can’t answer the basic question:
why wouldn’t you allow a whistleblower under oath to tell their story as
to what he did and lied about before our committee?” Durbin said of his Republican colleagues. “They’re not interested.”


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November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump. We look
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

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