Trump nominates DOJ official, former lawyer Emil Bove for Third Circuit

WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday formally nominated Emil Bove, an acting Justice Department official, former federal prosecutor, and one of Trump’s past defense attorneys, to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

It was a widely-expected move — reports have circulated for weeks that Bove was the frontrunner for the appellate nomination — but it’s one that’s sure to cause heartburn for Democrats who have accused him of misconduct during his time as the Justice Department’s acting deputy attorney general.

On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump announced Bove’s nomination, telling followers that the current principal associate deputy attorney general would “never let you down” as a Third Circuit jurist. He pointed to Bove’s experience as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he helped lead the jurisdiction’s counterterrorism and international narcotics division.

“Emil is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone,” the president wrote.

Though the Trump administration has only announced a handful of judicial nominees, Bove may prove to be the White House’s most controversial court appointee yet.

In February, Bove, the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, penned a letter directing federal prosecutors to drop their charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The acting official reasoned at the time that the case against Adams, which included corruption charges related to foreign contributions to his mayoral campaigns, was unfairly preventing the mayor from addressing immigration issues in New York City.

Seven different federal prosecutors refused to carry out the Justice Department’s directive, including lead prosecutor Hagan Scotten, who wrote in his resignation letter that it would take someone who was “enough of a fool, or enough of a coward” to file the motion to dismiss.

Bove’s involvement in dismissing the Adams case also drew consternation from Democrats, as well as accusations of inappropriate conduct.

Senate Democrats in March filed a formal complaint against the acting deputy attorney general with the New York State Bar, arguing that Bove had “abused his position in numerous ways,” including using the Justice Department’s prosecutorial power to “coerce” the Southern District of New York into dropping its charges against Adams. They asked the bar association to open a formal investigation into his actions.

“Mr. Bove’s conduct not only speaks to his fitness as a lawyer; his activities are part of a broader course of conduct by President Trump and his allies to undermine the traditional independence of the Department of Justice’s investigations and prosecutions and the rule of law,” the Democrats wrote at the time.

A spokesperson for Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee who led the request for a probe into Bove’s conduct, declined to comment on his nomination to the Third Circuit.

As part of his confirmation process, Bove will need to appear before the upper chamber’s Judiciary Committee, where he is likely to field tough questions from Democrats about his actions during the Adams case as well as his experience representing Trump as his attorney — the nominee defended the president in federal cases related to his handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

A spokesperson for Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the panel and its chairman, did not offer a specific reaction to Bove’s nomination, telling Courthouse News that the Judiciary Committee was “aware” he’d been tapped by the White House and that it will follow its “standard process” for reviewing judicial nominees. The spokesperson added that the committee “looks forward to a prompt hearing on his nomination.”

The valuable Third Circuit vacancy is no stranger to controversy. Former President Joe Biden, during his term, attempted to fill the slot with attorney Adeel Mangi, who became the subject of a monthslong messaging campaign by Republicans and conservative legal activists who sought to tie him to terrorism and anti-law enforcement ideology.

Democrats widely panned the effort as a smear campaign, criticizing its highly tenuous claims about Mangi’s involvement with a Rutgers University research program and a reform-minded prison advocacy group. Some suggested that the attacks on Mangi, who is of Pakistani descent, were motivated by Islamophobia.

Still, the assault on Biden’s Third Circuit pick proved enough to sway several more moderate Democrats up for reelection in 2024, placing the nominee in confirmation limbo. In November, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ultimately agreed to scuttle Mangi’s nomination and three other would-be appellate judges in a late-night deal with Republicans, which allowed the upper chamber to vote on a handful of federal district court picks.

Mangi, cut free from his obligation, let loose on the White House in a scathing letter, slamming the Senate deal that sunk his nomination and calling the judicial selection process “fundamentally broken.”

“This is no longer a system of evaluating fitness for office,” Mangi wrote at the time. “It is now a channel for the raising of money based on performative McCarthyism before video cameras, and for the dissemination of dark-money-funded attacks that especially target minorities.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Judiciary Committee has yet to schedule confirmation hearings for any of the judicial nominees the Trump administration has put forward so far. Members of Congress will return to Washington next week following their Memorial Day recess.

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