Amid Courtroom Spectacles, Senate Should Confirm Emil Bove

President Trump and his team continue to fight a flood of lawsuits against the administration, which has consumed time and resources at every major federal agency as well as at the White House.

Since January, judges have entered a record 40 preliminary injunctions to halt executive orders and other policies central to Trump’s agenda. Democratic judges unsurprisingly appear to be the most brazenly anti-Trump – which is why the country dodged a bullet last year when Joe Biden abandoned his nomination of Adeel Mangi, a Muslim activist from New Jersey, to a post on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. 

The seat, which once belonged to Justice Samuel Alito, remains open; the court handles federal appeals in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands.

On Wednesday, the president announced his selection of Emil Bove, the current principal deputy attorney general, to fill the vacancy. “Emil is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on May 28. “He will end the Weaponization of Justice, restore the Rule of Law, and do everything else that is necessary to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Emil Bove will never let you down!”

Bove, 44, represented the president in the state financial records case in New York City and the federal documents case in southern Florida where he successfully argued for the dismissal of the case, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, based on Smith’s unconstitutional appointment. In July 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon dropped the 40-count indictment against the president after concluding Smith’s position violated the Appointments Clause.

Bove recently made headlines when he stepped into the temporary role of running the Department of Justice awaiting the Senate confirmation of Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his one-time law partner.

The New York native and Georgetown Law School graduate wasted no time starting to clean house; high-level prosecutors involved in the DOJ’s lawfare against Trump immediately were reassigned to a newly-formed “sanctuary cities” enforcement unit, prompting several to retire or resign. 

Multiple senior FBI officials including the heads of the Miami and Washington field offices, which were involved in the August 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago, also got the ax.

Bove then turned to the Biden DOJ’s sprawling Jan. 6 prosecution. He fired dozens of temporary assistant U.S. attorneys who had been hired to handle Jan. 6 prosecutions; the so-called “Capitol Siege” unit of the DOJ was shuttered following the president’s blanket pardon of nearly 1,600 J6 defendants on his first day in office.

Bove also launched an inquiry to gather information about FBI employees involved in the politically-motivated Jan. 6 investigation, the largest in the bureau’s history, but his efforts were met with internal resistance from high-level FBI officials. The interim FBI director, a placeholder prior to the confirmation of Kash Patel to head the agency, at first refused to cooperate in the inquiry, a move Bove described as “insubordination.” (A group representing FBI employees also filed a lawsuit in D.C. district court seeking to keep the information and identities of the respondents under seal.)

James Dennehy, head of the New York FBI field office at the time, also advised his office to defy the new leadership. “Today we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy,” Dennehy wrote in an office-wide email in February. “Time for me to dig in.”

Dennehy was forced out the following month to great fanfare at the FBI’s largest office.

But Bove’s decision to drop the DOJ’s five-count indictment against New York Mayor Eric Adams earned him the most headlines – and more defiance from career lawyers. Determining that the charges, filed by the Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in September 2024, were in retaliation after “Mayor Adams publicly criticized President Biden’s failed immigration policies,” Bove filed a motion to dismiss the bribery indictment in February.

Top prosecutors in the SDNY office, where Bove had worked for 10 years including as co-chief of the terrorism and international narcotics unit, coordinated in an open revolt against Bove’s request. Another placeholder, acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, released to the media an eight-page letter explaining why she refused to sign a motion to dismiss the case while refuting Bove’s allegation of political taint in the matter. If Bondi did not overrule Bove, Sassoon threatened, “I am prepared to offer my resignation.”

Bove not only accepted her resignation but announced she and others were the subjects of investigation by AG Bondi and the Office of Professional Responsibility. Others in the office followed Sassoon’s lead; five more SDNY attorneys quit. Hagen Scotten, one of two prosecutors on the Adams case, also publicly released a resignation letter. “I expect you will find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion [to dismiss the case],” Scotten wrote to Bove.

When other DOJ lawyers also refused, Bove took matters into his own hands. “Mr. Bove was forced to argue for the dismissal himself, appearing alone at the prosecution table at a February hearing in Manhattan federal court,” the New York Times reported.

Oddly, despite a solid educational and legal record in addition to his recent successes in rooting out partisan actors at the DOJ, some so-called “conservatives” oppose Bove’s nomination. Ed Whelan, a legal writer for National Review, recently referred to Bove as Trump’s “henchman” and is openly questioning his credentials for the job. (Whelan fully endorsed Amy Coney Barrett’s rise to the Supreme Court after she spent a mere three years on an appellate court without any prior judicial or prosecutorial experience.)

Rather than commend Bove for bringing much needed personnel reform at a demonstrably political DOJ, Whelan lamented the loss of “highly qualified attorneys … who left DOJ over the [Adams] imbroglio.”

But considering the political spectacle now underway in federal courtrooms from coast to coast, where lifetime appointed judges act in unprecedented haste to sabotage the president’s agenda, which is endorsed by the majority of Americans who put him in office, Bove’s nomination should be embraced by conservatives and endorsed by Republican senators.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.