On Feb. 13, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, previously best known for defending Donald Trump in three of his criminal cases, wrote a letter heard round the American legal world.
Responding to Danielle Sassoon, the Southern District of New York’s then-acting U.S. attorney who resigned rather than comply with what Bove called an “express instruction” to dismiss the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Bove wrote: “You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.” He then declared that Sassoon and the prosecutors “principally responsible” for the case would be investigated by the Office of the Attorney General for potential weaponization of the federal government and by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which was established in the wake of Watergate to review allegations of professional misconduct, including ethical abuses.
Bove has hardly backed off his criticism of the prosecutors involved in the Adams case, from start to finish.
Bove has hardly backed off his criticism of the prosecutors involved in the Adams case, from start to finish. In fact, at a Feb. 19 court hearing, he told U.S. District Judge Dale Ho that he believes the very existence of the Adams case “reflects, at minimum, appearances of impropriety that give cause for concern about abuse of the criminal justice process.”
But as Bove has impugned the conduct of those federal prosecutors, at least three complaints about him have been submitted to the relevant New York state body responsible for attorney discipline. In a Feb. 19 letter, the nonprofit organization American Oversight requested an immediate investigation into whether Bove violated New York attorney conduct rules when handling the Adams case, including alleged attempts of his “to induce other lawyers to engage in unethical behavior.” Two days later, the Campaign for Accountability submitted a similar complaint not only to New York state, but also to the chief judge of the Southern District (SDNY), alleging that Bove’s conduct in connection with the Adams case may have violated at least six different ethical rules. A third complaint, by a Democratic member of the New York State Senate, was submitted to the state disciplinary committee that day as well.
Moreover, the Adams affair is hardly the first time Bove’s conduct as a lawyer has been questioned. (The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Bove’s behalf.)
First, there was the email sent by a group of defense lawyers to SDNY leaders when Bove was under consideration for a promotion around 2018. According to Politico, the attorneys alleged that Bove had “deployed questionable tactics, including threatening defendants with increasingly severe charges the lawyers believed he couldn’t prove.” Bove did not receive the promotion at the time.
Next came the case he supervised after he was promoted roughly a year later to be co-chief of what is now known as the National Security and International Narcotics Unit. In that role, Bove oversaw a matter in which SDNY prosecutors not only repeatedly failed to disclose exculpatory evidence but also, according to the judge overseeing the case, “minimized and obfuscated when pressed for an explanation.” After dismissing the case because of “severe” errors, the judge ordered prosecutors to submit sworn declarations detailing their involvement in the disclosure saga.
Moreover, the Adams affair is hardly the first time Bove’s conduct as a lawyer has been questioned.
While ultimately determining that none of the prosecutors involved had “intentionally withheld documents from the defense or intentionally misled the Court,” the judge concluded that all of them, including Bove and his co-chief, “dug themselves in deeper rather than squarely take responsibility for their past missteps.” That judge also referred the matter to the Office of Professional Responsibility — the same DOJ office Bove has tasked with investigating Sassoon and others involved in the Adams matter. (Bove and his then-co-chief were not among those investigated, and all involved were cleared of wrongdoing, as reflected in a public investigative summary.) Politico reported that Bove did not respond to a request for comment.
Bove left SDNY less than a year after the court’s decision. But the biggest challenge involving his own conduct was yet to come.
In January 2022, he joined Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi, a New Jersey law firm that’s known regionally but not the kind of white-shoe firm that often competes for SDNY’s stars. By the following summer, Bove undertook the representation of a criminal defendant named Yanping “Yvette” Wang. For more than two years, one of Wang’s co-defendants, Miles Guo, had been under investigation by the SDNY unit Bove supervised. While Guo and Wang were subsequently indicted on unrelated fraud and money laundering charges, SDNY lawyers advised Bove of their belief that he had a disqualifying conflict of interest under federal law prohibiting certain actions by former government attorneys, as well as attorney conduct rules. But when Bove refused to stand down, their dispute became a formal — and public — fight. In moving to disqualify Bove from representing Wang, SDNY prosecutors argued that Bove’s supervision of an investigation into Guo had supplied him with “knowledge of, or access to, confidential and classified factual matters that are plainly relevant to this prosecution.” They further contended that Bove’s client could not knowingly waive those conflicts because “Bove is restricted from informing Wang of material facts of his prior representation of the United States in connection with its investigation” of Guo. But when Bove refused to stand down, their dispute became a formal — and public — fight. Bove was unmoved. Citing a Wall Street Journal report published shortly after the fraud investigation began, Bove argued that “everyone in the world who had access” to that newspaper was aware of the investigation, that the two matters were unrelated, and that in any event, his participation was hardly substantial because he was participating in a separate trial at the time and had “no recollection of seeing the warrants or any other documents related to the case, at any point.” Ultimately, in October 2023, a Southern District judge concluded that while the two investigations were not “substantially related” — they featured “different FBI agents, different AUSAs [assistant U.S. attorneys], and different alleged conduct and targeted offenses” — Bove’s prior work posed a “potential conflict” and his client must provide a “knowing and intelligent” waiver, on the record at a court hearing, for Bove to remain her counsel. Specifically, the judge determined that Bove’s client needed to be advised that Bove’s “prior government service will bar him from advancing certain defense strategies, and that if Wang nonetheless elects to retain Bove, she must fully abandon certain defenses,” including the option of entering into a joint defense agreement with her co-defendant. Eight days later, Bove reported that his client would not agree to the waiver outlined by the court, and he sought to withdraw from the case. By then, he had left Chiesa and linked up with Todd Blanche, the current nominee for deputy attorney general, and started representing Trump. Bove never looked back.
Lisa Rubin is an MS NOW legal correspondent and a former litigator. Previously, she was the off-air legal analyst for “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “Alex Wagner Tonight.”
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