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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