In his December 10, 2025 complaint "Fix the Court" Executive Director Gabe With wrote the Third Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge: https://fixthecourt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Bove-complaint-GR-12.10.25ff.pdf
Chief Judge Michael A. Chagares
Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
James A. Byrne United States Courthouse
601 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
December 10, 2025
Dear Chief Judge Chagares:
My name is Gabe Roth, and I am executive director of Fix the Court, a national nonpartisan organization that
advocates for greater openness and accountability in the federal courts.
Today I file this complaint, under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act, 28 U.S.C. §§351ff, against Third Circuit
Judge Emil Bove for his attendance at a President Trump rally in Mount Pocono, Pa., on Dec. 9.
When asked about his attendance by a reporter, Judge Bove said he was “just here as a citizen coming to watch
the President speak.” 1 There is no prohibition, of course, against a federal judge attending an event at which a
President is speaking. For example, Supreme Court justices attend the State of the Union each year as a show of
unity among the branches and their shared commitment to our tripartite form of government, and judges and
justices are at times guests at White House state dinners.
But last night’s event in Pennsylvania — prominent conservative voices are calling it a “rally,” so that’s what I
will call it here2
— was a far cry from the State of the Union or a state dinner for its abject partisanship. It should
have been obvious to Judge Bove, either at the start of the rally or fairly close to it, that this was a highly charged,
highly political event that no federal judge should have been within shouting distance of.
To offer but a few examples, President Trump attacked “the radical left” about 90 seconds in. Three minutes in,
he started talking about the 2020 election, which he falsely claimed he won, and six minutes later, he encouraged
rallygoers to boo at the “fake news.” At 18:50, the President mused about running for a third term and the crowd
started chanting “four more years”; 3 at 25:28, he called President Biden a “son of a bitch”; at 28:38, he called for
the deportation of a Democratic member of Congress; and at 38:20, he called Democrats “bad people” and “sick
people.” There are no reports that Judge Bove vacated his seat after hearing any of these injudicious comments.
The Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges is fairly clear here. Canon 2 states that a judge “should avoid impropriety
and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.” Attending a Trump event — and not leaving when it became
clear that the speech was, in fact, a partisan rally — violates this canon.
Canon 5 states that a judge “should refrain from political activity.” Last night’s event in Pennsylvania was barely
distinguishable (i.e., only temporally) from a Trump rally in 2020 or 2024, both of which were obvious political
activities.
Finally, in the coming days, if it hasn’t happened already, there will be questions from reasonable and unbiased
observers as to whether Judge Bove’s attendance imperils his impartiality when assigned cases in which Trump is
1 See https://x.com/V aughnHillyard/status/1998508313642938631.
2 See, e.g., https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1998460803553653073 and https://x.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1998575939450532097.
3 The timestamps are from a Fox News posting of the rally, available this link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZJgbCFaM84.on either side of the “v.” This question of recusal is not something I wish to address here directly, but I do want to
make the point that the mere discussion speaks to the impropriety of the judge’s attendance. (And if a judge
attended a VP Harris, Sen. Sanders or Gov. Newsom rally, for example, that would merit a complaint and a similar
recusal discussion if said judge was assigned a case involving one of those politicians.)
For all these reasons, I believe Judge Bove has violated multiple Canons of the Code of Conduct, should be
admonished for his behavior and should be subject to any other discipline under the Judicial Conduct and
Disability Act that the Chief Judge and the Judicial Council deem fit.
Sincerely,
Gabe Roth
Fix the Court
Gabe@FixTheCourt.com
Judge Emil Bove Faces Ethics Complaint for Attending Trump Rally
One of the president’s appeals-court nominees, a former lawyer for the president, was in the crowd at a raucous event in Mt. Pocono, Pa.
Reporting on the federal judiciary
Judge Emil Bove III, a federal appeals court judge who made his career as a stalwart supporter of President Trump, is now facing a complaint over his attendance at a campaign-style rally held by Mr. Trump at a Pennsylvania casino resort on Tuesday.
The complaint, which was filed on Wednesday with the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and was written by Gabe Roth, who heads the advocacy group Fix the Court, said that Judge Bove’s attendance at the rally violated rules that prohibit judges from “the appearance of impropriety” and engaging in “political activity.”
Judge Bove declined to comment. At the event, he said he was “just here as a citizen coming to watch the president speak,” according to a reporter from MSNBC who spotted him there.
Judge Bove previously served on Mr. Trump’s criminal defense team and was then chosen by Mr. Trump for a high-ranking job in the Justice Department. Mr. Trump’s selection of Judge Bove to the federal bench was a departure from his first-term judicial nominees, who were mostly well-known conservative lawyers with ties to the Federalist Society, not loyalists who had personally defended the president in court. The Senate narrowly confirmed him to the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in July.
In response to what is formally known as a “judicial conduct or disability complaint,” the circuit’s chief judge has the option of dismissing it or appointing a committee to investigate further. The committee can then recommend that a larger council of judges censure the judge or consider other punishments, such as deciding the judge will be assigned no new cases for a period of time.
Before becoming a judge, Mr. Bove had drawn considerable attention from critics for his hard-charging approach to implementing Mr. Trump’s agenda. During his stint at the Justice Department, he was involved in a March decision by the administration not to return two flights carrying Venezuelan immigrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, despite an order from Judge James E. Boasberg. Another senior justice department official, who has since been dismissed from the government, claimed that Mr. Bove talked openly about the possibility of flouting court orders, which he denied in his Senate confirmation hearing.
Earlier in his career, as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Mr. Bove helped investigate Honduran drug traffickers, which eventually led to the 2024 conviction of President Juan Orlando Hernández. After Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Hernández earlier this month, Judge Bove told the Times that “I completely trust and respect his judgment in exercising the pardon power, which the Constitution vests in him alone by virtue of his mandate from the American people.”
Judges are sometimes among the audience for presidential speeches, such as the State of the Union. But the complaint emphasized stridently partisan statements that Mr. Trump made at the Tuesday event, held in Mount Pocono, Pa.
In a meandering 90-minute speech that was billed as focusing on economic matters, Mr. Trump falsely disputed the fact that consumer prices were rising while lashing out at undocumented immigrants and transgender Americans. He used expletives in reference to some immigrants’ countries of origin, and said his predecessor, former President Joseph R. Biden, “destroyed our country.”
On Wednesday, a White House social media account called the event an “electric rally.”
“This was a highly charged, highly political event that no federal judge should have been within shouting distance of,” Mr. Roth wrote in his complaint.
Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge, agreed that the rally was a “political event,” and that Judge Bove’s attendance could have created “at least the appearance of partiality, particularly given what the president said.” Sitting on an appellate court, Judge Bove could be in a position to rule on some of the hundreds of lawsuits over Mr. Trump’s policies that are now making their way through the federal system.
“I can’t understand how he could possibly think it appropriate to go there,” said Edward Whelan, a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and a prominent conservative legal commentator. “You can argue about whether the rules clearly prohibit what he did, but he showed terrible judgment.”
The Latest on the Trump Administration
Trump’s Economic Speech: Amid a backlash driven in part by sweeping tariffs, President Trump gave a speech that veered between assurances that life was better than ever under his administration and blaming immigrants for the country’s economic woes.
Homeless Aid: The Trump administration has withdrawn its high-profile plan to overhaul how $3.9 billion in federal aid to combat homelessness would be spent.
Foreign Tourists’ Social Media: Travelers visiting the United States from countries like Britain, France, Germany and South Korea could soon have to undergo a review of up to five years of their social media history, according to a proposal filed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Nvidia Chip Deal: Trump’s decision to allow the company to sell its chips to China has raised questions about whether he is prioritizing short-term economic gain over long-term American security interests.
Top Adviser’s Stock Sales: Stephen Miller sold shares in the mining company MP Materials following a lucrative deal between the company and the government.
Return to Times New Roman: Secretary of State Marco Rubio waded into the politics of typefaces with an order halting the State Department’s official use of Calibri, reversing a Biden-era directive that Rubio called a “wasteful” sop to diversity.
How We Report on the Trump Administration
Hundreds of readers asked about our coverage of the president. Times editors and reporters responded to some of the most common questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment