Credit: (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP)WASHINGTON — A man accused by some of lying to Congress and threatening to defy legal orders will soon be a judge on a federal appeals court that hears New Jersey cases, a lifetime appointment.
Brushing aside two separate whistleblower accusations, the Senate late Tuesday confirmed Emil Bove by a 50-49 vote to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Headquartered in Philadelphia, the court takes on appeals from Delaware, Pennsylvania and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as New Jersey.
Bove, a loyalist of and former attorney to President Donald Trump, had been widely panned by Democrats and former career prosecutors as unqualified for the judgeship. One of those whistleblower complaints alleged Bove floated the notion of ignoring federal court orders.
Republicans were unswayed and collected the necessary votes for confirmation. Bove is expected to join the court in the coming weeks.
Third Circuit action
The Third Circuit has been an active forum during the second Trump administration. A three-judge panel of the court recently ruled New Jersey cannot thwart private prison companies from reaching agreements with the U.S. government to operate detention facilities in the state.
‘This is a very unfortunate day for the U.S. Senate, a very unfortunate day for the State of New Jersey and a very unfortunate day for the Third Circuit.’ — U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)
Appeals courts sit in the legal pecking order between district courts, where federal cases are generally filed, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bove will join a court of 22 judges that typically hear cases in three-person panels, to determine if a lower court or federal agency correctly applied the law.
Accused of lying
“This is a very unfortunate day for the U.S. Senate, a very unfortunate day for the State of New Jersey and a very unfortunate day for the Third Circuit,” said U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who pushed to delay a confirmation vote on Bove, citing accusations from an unnamed whistleblower that emerged this week.
Booker and other Senate Democrats accused Bove of repeatedly lying to senators during his June confirmation hearing, a charge Bove denied.
During his tenure this year at the Department of Justice, Bove told DOJ officials in March that they should contemplate defying court orders in order to speed the deportation of undocumented immigrants.
A whistleblower’s account
Bove and Republicans dispute that account filed by Erez Reuveni, a former career prosecutor at DOJ turned whistleblower.
According to Reuveni, during the March meeting Bove brought up “the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could” happen.
“Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘f— you’ and ignore any such court order. Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room,” Reuveni said in a filing.
Reuveni was fired from the DOJ after he told a judge in Maryland that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an undocumented immigrant, was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
Grassley’s defense
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which votes on judges, said his staff interviewed people at the meeting central to Reuveni’s complaint.
“Four separate people other than Mr. Bove who were present at the meeting told us the following: First, there was never any directive to ignore a court order, and secondly, each of them left the meeting with the understanding that the Justice Department would aggressively litigate but would follow court orders,” Grassley said Tuesday.
In his Senate questionnaire, which NJ Spotlight News obtained, Bove declined to state that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, instead only stating that Biden’s election was certified.
A separate whistleblower complaint accused Bove and other DOJ officials within the Trump administration of violating a court order about deportation policies.
The group Whistleblower Aid represents that second individual, who is unnamed but is described as a former attorney in DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation.
What Bove said — and declined to say
Andrew Bakaj, chief legal counsel of Whistleblower Aid, said his group provided evidence to the DOJ inspector general, an independent watchdog within the department that investigates wrongdoing.
“The expectation is that every whistleblower complaint is investigated with speed and due diligence,” Bakaj said.
In his Senate questionnaire, which NJ Spotlight News obtained, Bove declined to state that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, instead only stating that Biden’s election was certified.
Bove also declined to denounce the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol or say that Trump is ineligible for a third term, replying that “it would be improper to offer any such comment as a judicial nominee.”
Bove is one of several Trump administration officials, such as U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who worked for Trump in a personal capacity.
Before defending Trump in a New York hush-money case last year, Bove also worked on national security and narcotics cases in the Southern District of New York, broadly seen as the most prominent jurisdiction in the country, according to his biography from the Senate committee.
Republicans and some Democrats in 2024 blocked Adeel Mangi, a Jersey City lawyer, from confirmation to the Third Circuit seat. Mangi would have been the first Muslim American appellate judge in history.
