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Friday, August 01, 2025
Whistleblower evidence suggests Trump judicial nominee Emil Bove misled Senate. (Perry Stein & Theodoric Mayer, WaPo, July 28, 2025)
The United States Senate must reject or postpone the nomination of EMIL BOVE to the Third Circuit.
From The Washington Post:
Whistleblower evidence suggests Trump judicial nominee Emil Bove misled Senate
A third whistleblower has new information about a Justice Department official the president has nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
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Attorney Emil Bove follows then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as they arrive for Trump’s criminal trial at the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on May 29, 2024. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A new whistleblower has come forward to challenge the federal judicial nomination of Emil Bove, sharing evidence with lawmakers suggesting the controversial former attorney for Donald Trump and current top Justice Department official misled lawmakers during his confirmation hearing last month.
The whistleblower — whose existence has not been previously reported — presented documentation that contradicts claims Bove made before the Senate Judiciary Committee about a Justice Department prosecution. The Washington Post reviewed the evidence and agreed to withhold details to protect the identity of the whistleblower, whose lawyers spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the whistleblower’s fear of retribution.
Trump formally nominated Bove for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in June and a full Senate vote is expected this week — a faster timeline than most other judicial nominations.
The information follows revelations from two other Justice Department whistleblowers who have said that Bove told subordinates in a meeting in March that they may need to ignore court orders that would hamper Trump’s campaign to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. One of those whistleblowers, ousted Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni, has since gone public with his account.
The new whistleblower has offered information about Bove’s behavior regarding a different Justice Department matter.
“Emil Bove is a highly qualified judicial nominee who has done incredible work at the Department of Justice to help protect civil rights, dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Make America Safe Again,” said Justice Department spokesman Gates McGavick in a statement. “He will make an excellent judge — the Department’s loss will be the Third Circuit’s gain.”
Trump has nominated Bove — the president’s former defense attorney who represented him in three of the four criminal cases against him — to a lifetime appointment to the 3rd Circuit, which takes cases from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands. Bove serves as a senior official at the Justice Department, where he has been at the center of efforts to fire career prosecutors, craft legal strategy on immigration and drop federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
Senate Democrats have spent weeks trying to persuade Republicans to sink Bove’s nomination, arguing that he would prioritize the president’s agenda over properly enforcing the law. They also have complained that Republicans have rushed his nomination.
So far, Republicans have largely dismissed allegations against Bove, including the claims by Reuveni, who was fired in April after he admitted at a court hearing that the administration mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego García, an undocumented man living in Maryland. Abrego was flown to a prison in El Salvador despite a court order barring the move. Officials charged him with two crimes related to human smuggling. He is in federal custody in the United States.
In his whistleblower complaint, Reuveni said Bove “stressed to all in attendance [at the March meeting] that the planes need to take off no matter what” and that Justice Department attorneys may have to tell judges “f--- you” and ignore court orders to achieve Trump’s immigration goals.
The Justice Department and Bove have denied that account, and the White House has remained steadfast behind his nomination.
Democrats argue that an attorney who advocates defying court orders is unfit to serve on the federal bench. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has said that even if Reuveni’s account is mostly true, it does not disqualify Bove.
According to Sen. Cory Booker’s office, the latest whistleblower shared evidence first with Booker, a Judiciary Committee member who represents New Jersey. Booker and other Democrats have reviewed the evidence, multiple Senate staffers told The Post, which Booker has publicly described as significant.
“We have substantial information relevant to the truthfulness of the nominee,” Booker said in a speech on the Senate floor ahead of a preliminary vote on Bove’s nomination. At the time, he invited his Republican colleagues to review the claims. None immediately took him up on his offer, Senate staffers said.
Grassley’s staff met Monday with the whistleblower’s lawyers after days of back and forth and reviewed a summary of the whistleblower’s allegations, according to Grassley’s office. But Grassley’s staff was not allowed to review the underlying evidence, said Grassley spokeswoman Clare Slattery. Booker also never approached Grassley directly about the whistleblower’s evidence, Slattery said.
The whistleblower’s attorneys said that they had offered to allow Grassley to review the full evidence — though not his staffers alone.
“These eleventh-hour allegations, which were shared in advance with Democrats and the media but not with the Chairman or his staff, reek of a bad faith attempt to sink a nominee who’s already received committee approval,” Slattery said in a statement.
Booker and whistleblower advocates have said that government whistleblowers have been hesitant to come forward with allegations of wrongdoing, fearful that they could lose their jobs, receive threats and that their complaints may not be taken seriously.
“Another whistleblower has come forward with evidence that raises serious concerns with Emil Bove’s misconduct. This is another damning indictment of a man who should never be a federal judge — and Senate Republicans will bear full responsibility for the consequences if they rubber stamp Mr. Bove’s nomination,” said Josh Sorbe, a spokesman for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Last week, two Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) — voted against taking up Bove’s nomination and have indicated that they will oppose his confirmation. But Democrats need two additional Republicans to block Bove if all senators are voting. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority.
Democrats had hoped to sway Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), who is not running for reelection. Tillis opposed Trump’s nomination of Ed Martin to be the D.C. U.S. attorney because of Martin’s support for the pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, forcing the White House to pull his nomination.
But Tillis told reporters this month that he does not have the same problem with Bove, saying: “He didn’t trip the switch on January 6.” So far, Tillis has not responded to requests to review the evidence from the third whistleblower, the whistleblower’s attorneys said.
A spokesman for Tillis did not respond to a request for comment.
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