Battle Over Bove Ends With Senate Confirmation

The Senate confirmed former Trump lawyer Emil Bove 50-49 for a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge on Tuesday, with Republicans dismissing whistleblower complaints about his conduct at the Justice Department. A former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove was on Trump's legal team during his New York hush money trial and defended Trump in the two federal criminal cases. He will serve on the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Democrats vehemently opposed Bove's nomination, the AP reports, and at one point walked out of a confirmation hearing.

Some of the objections involved Bove's current position as a top Justice Department official and his role in the dismissal of the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Democrats also criticized his efforts to investigate department officials who were involved in the prosecutions of hundreds of Trump supporters over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Bove has accused FBI officials of "insubordination" for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the attack and ordered the firing of a group of prosecutors involved in those Jan. 6 criminal cases, per the AP.

Democrats have also cited evidence from two whistleblowers, a fired department lawyer who said earlier this month that Bove had suggested the Trump administration may need to ignore judicial commands—a claim that Bove denies—and new evidence from a whistleblower who did not go public. That whistleblower recently provided an audio recording of Bove that runs contrary to some of his testimony at his confirmation hearing last month, according to two people familiar with the recording.