More than 900 former Justice Department lawyers have signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing “deep concern” about the nomination of Emil Bove III, a senior Justice Department official, to serve as a federal appeals judge.
In the letter, dated Wednesday, the former department lawyers suggested that Mr. Bove had disgraced the department during his half-year tenure there, and that his confirmation would be “intolerable.”
Mr. Bove has been the face of some of the most controversial moves by the Justice Department in President Trump’s second term, and he has been accused by a whistle-blower of openly considering defying the courts, an allegation he has denied.
The Senate panel was scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether to advance Mr. Bove’s nomination to the full Senate. Mr. Trump has nominated Mr. Bove to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
The letter also mentioned Mr. Bove’s decision to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York (the interim Manhattan U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, resigned rather than sign off on Mr. Bove’s directive), and his role in firing prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who is now the top deputy to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, was accused in the whistle-blower complaint last month of having told subordinates that he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill Mr. Trump’s sweeping deportation campaign.
When Mr. Bove testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 25, he denied having suggested the department might defy court orders, telling lawmakers, “I am not anybody’s henchman, I am not an enforcer.”
The allegation was made by Erez Reuveni, a fired department lawyer, in a complaint filed to lawmakers and the Justice Department’s inspector general a day before Mr. Bove’s testimony to the panel.
The letter from former Justice Department lawyers noted that Mr. Reuveni had been in the department for about 15 years and had defended Trump administration policies. It described his whistle-blower complaint as credible, saying that it was “supported by contemporaneous communications between department attorneys.”
