Donald Trump got his man. On Tuesday, the Senate voted to confirm Emil Bove, the president’s former criminal-defense lawyer, to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. During his brief tenure as a top Justice Department official, Bove behaved like someone who still believed that the president was his client: directing political purges, pushing out employees who refused to carry out unethical orders, and allegedly urging subordinates to defy court rulings that constrained Trump’s agenda.
But Trump and his allies might come to regret appointing such a transparent partisan to the federal bench.
A few weeks ago, a group of former Justice Department lawyers, including me, asked to meet with Republican senators to discuss the Bove nomination. We all had worked on prosecutions related to January 6; several members of the group were among the roughly two dozen lawyers whom Bove had fired for precisely that reason. Our argument was that even Republican senators eager to push the judiciary to the right should, out of their own self-interest, vote against confirming Bove. Unfortunately, staff for just one senator, Chuck Grassley, agreed to meet with us. Most offices never even responded. Because they were unwilling to hear us in private, I will make our argument in public.