The case against Emil Bove becoming a federal judge was already unusually strong. The Donald Trump defense lawyer-turned-Trump Justice Department official’s handling of the Eric Adams case alone is grounds enough to question his temperament as a lawyer, much less as a judge.
But ahead of his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, yet more information has emerged that further puts Bove’s character at issue. As first reported by The New York Times on Tuesday and confirmed by NBC News, Bove told subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to carry out the president’s deportation campaign.
The Times reported that the whistleblower letter — which the outlet linked in its report — came from Erez Reuveni, a longtime government lawyer who was fired after failing to toe the party line in court. The Times report summarizes the letter, noting that Reuveni describes “three instances in which senior Justice Department officials engaged in wrongdoing by ignoring court orders, presenting legal arguments with no basis in law, misrepresenting facts to the courts, and directing him in one instance to misstate facts in violation of his ‘legal and ethical duties as an officer of the court.’” Reuveni was fired after declining to push the administration’s claim that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the government illegally sent to El Salvador, was a terrorist.
Separately, in the context of litigation over the Alien Enemies Act and the administration’s violation of a court order against deportation flights, Reuveni described a meeting during which Bove “stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘f— you’ and ignore any such court order.”
Again, Bove is seeking a lifetime judicial appointment — as a federal appeals court judge, to be exact, just a step below the Supreme Court.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche denounced Reuveni’s account as “falsehoods” from a “disgruntled former employee.” Of course, Blanche represented Trump alongside Bove at the president’s criminal trial in New York and now works with him atop the Trump DOJ. So it would be surprising if he didn’t offer a Trumpian denial in defense of his comrade, a denial that doubles as a defense of the work Blanche has done and continues to do at the DOJ.
On the other side of the ledger, consider that Reuveni is hardly the first DOJ lawyer to find themselves on the opposite side of Bove while attempting to defend the rule of law. Recall Bove’s handling of the Adams affair, which even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board said “doesn’t inspire confidence.” Bove led the DOJ’s attempt to push through a shady quid pro quo dismissal of the New York City mayor’s criminal case. A federal judge rejected Bove’s quest, but the failed hatchet job sparked a rash of resignations by government lawyers who declined to do his dirty work. And it’s worth stressing that these lawyers aren’t left-wing saboteurs who were lying in wait to catch Bove subverting the rule of law. Reuveni won accolades from the department during the first Trump administration, and he was apparently entrusted at a high level during the second administration — until he became inconvenient to Bove and the rest of the DOJ brass. Likewise, the most high-profile resignations of federal prosecutors in the Adams affair boasted traditional Republican connections like clerkships with GOP-appointed justices. To be sure, Bove’s nomination is not being considered by a neutral tribunal. It’s being considered in the political arena, where Republicans control the Senate. If he doesn’t make it through for whatever reason, plenty of Republican lawyers or lower court judges could fill that open slot on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit — and who knows, maybe they’d be even worse than Bove. But this latest evidence (not that it was needed to reach this conclusion) is the latest example of why Bove shouldn’t be a judge. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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