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WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump’s controversial pick to fill a crucial vacancy on a federal appeals court was one step away from Senate confirmation Thursday, as lawmakers approved one last procedural measure and teed up his nominee for a final floor vote.
The Senate voted 50-47 to limit debate on Emil Bove, nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The move puts the Justice Department official and one-time personal lawyer for the president on track for confirmation in the coming days.
And the procedural hurdle, known as cloture, will likely serve as a bellwether for how the nominee will perform on a final vote. Just two Republicans, Maine Senator Susan Collins and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, refused to back the move to proceed to Bove’s confirmation.
Collins told MSNBC this week that she felt Bove “would not serve as an impartial jurist.” Murkowski signaled on Wednesday that she would not support him.
Bove, nominated in March to the appellate circuit, has quickly become one of the second Trump administration’s most controversial judicial nominees. Though Republicans and the White House have both pointed to his experience as a New York federal prosecutor and argued that he is qualified to join the federal bench, Democrats have painted Bove as a partisan operator and argued that he would serve as an ally to Trump rather than as an impartial arbiter of the law.
The nominee garnered scrutiny from critics for his conduct as Trump’s acting deputy attorney general, a role he held before Todd Blanche was confirmed as the Justice Department’s No. 2 official earlier this year. Among other things, Bove was involved in efforts to push federal prosecutors into dropping corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
And Bove was implicated in a whistleblower report made public this month, in which former Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni claimed the nominee had expressed willingness to defy federal court orders. According to Reuveni, who was fired from the agency in April, Bove had said during a March meeting of Justice Department staff that they may need to tell a federal judge “fuck you” in order to carry out the administration’s mass deportation plans.
The Justice Department has contested the contents of the whistleblower report, framing Reuveni as a disgruntled former employee with an axe to grind — and Bove told lawmakers during a June confirmation hearing that he did not recall making the “fuck you” comment.
Bove’s Senate confirmation has also become the flashpoint for partisan tensions. During a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee meeting last week, Democrats walked out in protest as Republicans cut off debate on the nominee and forced a vote.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, whose home state would be under Bove’s jurisdiction as a Third Circuit judge, called the move a “sham.” Speaking with Courthouse News after the meeting, he accused Republicans of flouting Senate rules to ram through a Trump nominee.
“It just shows again how they’re now literally supplicating themselves before Donald Trump, surrendering their power, even their roles and responsibilities for their dear leader,” he said at the time.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that Bove represented the “extreme of the extreme.”
The nominee, for his part, has rejected the idea that he would be a “henchman” for the president. And in a Senate questionnaire, first reported by Courthouse News, Bove said he had “not advised a DOJ attorney or other government official to violate a court order.”
Top Justice Department officials, meanwhile, have been unusually involved in Bove’s nomination for a role in the federal judiciary, which is part of a branch of government nominally independent from the executive.
Both Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were present at Bove’s June confirmation hearing in the Judiciary Committee, a move which was not only striking to legal experts but also spurred questions from Democrats about whether the administration officials had attended as a way to pressure Senate Republicans into backing the nominee — who is currently a principal associate deputy attorney general at the agency.
The Justice Department told Courthouse News this month that any suggestion of a pressure campaign from Bondi and Blanche was “cynical and conspiratorial” and has contended that the Justice Department officials were at Bove’s hearing to support a friend and colleague.
Ahead of the Judiciary Committee vote on the nominee last week, Blanche penned an op-ed published in Fox News in which he referred to Bove as “Trump’s DOJ champion” and called him “the most capable and principled lawyer I have ever known.”
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