Senate Republicans are taking an enormous risk with the federal bench right now.
Emil Bove is one of President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyers. He’s now a senior Justice Department official — and he’s widely described as Trump’s “enforcer” for his hard-charging, unapologetically MAGA approach to that job.
If Trump gets his way, moreover, Bove could soon become one of the most powerful people in the United States. Last week, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve Bove’s nomination to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, after the committee’s Democrats walked out in protest. In the likely event that Bove is confirmed, he’ll be well-positioned to become one of the United States’ nine philosopher kings and queens.SCOTUS, Explained
Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser.
According to legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin, “the president is grooming Mr. Bove for bigger things — possibly a seat on the Supreme Court.” Should that happen, it would mark a return to cronyism in Supreme Court nominations. For many decades, presidents of both parties have chosen justices largely based on those justices’ allegiance to their political party’s ideological agenda, rather than based on personal loyalty to the president.
Indeed, Trump’s decision to place personal loyalty over conservative ideology may explain why much of the opposition to Bove is bipartisan. Bove isn’t simply opposed by lefty groups that traditionally protest many Republican judicial nominees — he is also opposed by some prominent right-wing judicial activists, one of whom warned that Trump is turning “his back on principled legal conservatives.”
Bove’s views on a wide range of issues that have historically animated movement conservatives — such as abortion and religion — are largely unknown. So, while Bove will almost certainly be unflinchingly loyal to Trump if he is confirmed to the federal bench, there’s no way to know whether he will hold to the Republican line on a wide range of domestic policy issues.The case against Emil Bove
Based solely on his resume, Bove is conventionally qualified for a federal judicial appointment. He graduated from Georgetown University’s law school, clerked for a federal appeals court judge, and worked as a litigator for more than a dozen years — both at the Justice Department and in private practice.
Bove currently serves as principal associate deputy attorney general, essentially the No. 2 lawyer in the Justice Department’s No. 2 office. For the first month-and-a-half of Trump’s second term, however, he was DOJ’s second-ranking official, period — acting deputy attorney general.
By backing nominees like Bove, Republicans risk filling the bench with the same kind of unreliable allies that they fought to stop in 2005.
Though Bove’s tenure in the more senior role was brief, it was quite eventful.
