Nearly 20 years ago, during George W. Bush’s fifth year in the White House, the Republican president thought it’d be a good idea to nominate his own former lawyer, Harriet Miers, to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. This quickly proved to be a fiasco, which collapsed within weeks.
Two decades later, Donald Trump is apparently thinking along similar lines: The incumbent GOP president, also in his fifth year, is nominating one of his own former lawyers to serve on the federal appellate bench. The New York Times reported:
President Trump announced Wednesday that he would nominate Emil Bove III, the polarizing and widely feared top Justice Department official responsible for strong-arm tactics in enacting Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, to be a federal appeals judge. Mr. Bove, 44, is a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump. He would fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
In a statement published to his social media platform, the president insisted that Bove “is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone.”
All things considered, “everyone” was probably the wrong choice of words.
Let’s start with Bove’s rise to prominence as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he faced a variety of allegations about his lack of professionalism. The Associated Press reported a few months ago, “One lawyer complained in the 2018 email that Bove was ‘completely reckless and out of control’ in how he handled his cases. Another, upset about Bove’s rudeness and power plays, said he needed ‘adult supervision.’ A third, a top federal public defender in the city, said ‘he cannot be bothered to treat lesser mortals with respect or empathy.’”
The AP quoted Christine Chung, a former federal prosecutor, who said, “In my experience litigating against him, what [Bove] enjoyed most as a prosecutor was wielding power — the single worst possible trait for a public servant. But people won’t speak against him publicly because he’s also vindictive.”
Bove later parlayed this background into a role as a Trump defense attorney, punctuated by his defeat in the Stormy Daniels case.
After his former client was elected to a second term in the Oval Office, Bove was rewarded with a powerful position in the Justice Department, where he fired federal prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and helped to oversee the scandalous dismissal of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case (among other things). In fact, as my MSNBC colleague Lisa Rubin noted in February, Bove’s handling of the Adams case generated “at least three complaints about him … to the relevant New York state body responsible for attorney discipline.” Around the same time, Rubin added, the Campaign for Accountability submitted a similar complaint to both the state and the chief judge of the Southern District, alleging that Bove’s conduct in connection with the Adams case may have violated at least six different ethical rules. The idea that this guy deserves a lifetime position on the federal appellate bench is plainly absurd. Trump’s nomination creates yet another test for Senate Republicans, which, if recent history is any guide, they will almost certainly fail. The confirmation hearings are bound to be interesting. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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