{"id":46776,"date":"2025-07-30T05:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T05:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/46776\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T05:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T05:22:08","slug":"senate-confirms-trump-lawyer-emil-bove-for-appeals-court-amid-whistleblower-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/46776\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate confirms Trump lawyer Emil Bove for appeals court amid whistleblower claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Senate confirmed former Trump lawyer Emil Bove<\/a> 50-49 for a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge Tuesday as Republicans dismissed whistleblower complaints about his conduct at the Justice Department. <\/p>\n

A former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove was on Trump\u2019s legal team during his New York hush money trial<\/a> and defended Trump in the two federal criminal cases. He will serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n

Democrats have vehemently opposed Bove\u2019s nomination, citing his current position as a top Justice Department official and his role in the dismissal of the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. They have also criticized his efforts to investigate department officials who were involved in the prosecutions of hundreds of Trump supporters who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. <\/p>\n

Bove has accused FBI officials of \u201cinsubordination\u201d<\/a> for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the attack and ordered the firing<\/a> of a group of prosecutors involved in those Jan. 6 criminal cases.<\/p>\n

Whistleblowers cite evidence against Bove <\/p>\n

Democrats have also cited evidence from whistleblowers, a fired department lawyer who said last month that Bove had suggested the Trump administration may need to ignore judicial commands<\/a> \u2014 a claim that Bove denies<\/a> \u2014 and new evidence from a whistleblower who did not go public. That whistleblower recently provided an audio recording of Bove that runs contrary to some of his testimony at his confirmation hearing last month, according to two people familiar with the recording.<\/p>\n

The audio is from a private video conference call at the Department of Justice in February in which Bove, a top official at the department, discussed his handling of the dismissed case against Adams, according to transcribed quotes from the audio reviewed by The Associated Press. <\/p>\n

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the whistleblower has not made the recording public. The whistleblower\u2019s claims were first reported by the Washington Post. <\/p>\n

None of that evidence has so far been enough to sway Senate Republicans \u2014 all but two of them voted to confirm Bove as GOP senators have deferred to Trump on virtually all of his picks. <\/p>\n

Democrats say Bove\u2019s confirmation is a \u2018dark day\u2019<\/p>\n

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that Bove\u2019s confirmation is a \u201cdark day\u201d and that Republicans are only supporting Bove because of his loyalty to the president. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfathomable that just over four years after the insurrection at the Capitol, when rioters smashed windows, ransacked offices, desecrated this chamber, Senate Republicans are willingly putting someone on the bench who shielded these rioters from facing justice, who said their prosecution was a grave national injustice,\u201d Schumer said. <\/p>\n

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against Bove\u2019s confirmation. \u201cI don\u2019t think that somebody who has counseled other attorneys that you should ignore the law, you should reject the law, I don\u2019t think that that individual should be placed in a lifetime seat on the bench,\u201d Murkowski said Tuesday. <\/p>\n

At his confirmation hearing last month, Bove addressed criticism of his tenure head-on, telling lawmakers he understands some of his decisions \u201chave generated controversy.\u201d But Bove said he has been inaccurately portrayed as Trump\u2019s \u201chenchman\u201d and \u201cenforcer\u201d at the department. <\/p>\n

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee released Tuesday evening just before the vote, Bove said he does not have the whistleblower\u2019s recording but is \u201cundeterred by this smear campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

A February call emerges as evidence <\/p>\n

Senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing asked Bove about the February 14 call with lawyers in the Justice Department\u2019s Public Integrity Section, which had received significant public attention because of his unusual directive that the attorneys had an hour to decide among themselves who would agree to file on the department\u2019s behalf the motion to dismiss the case against Adams. <\/p>\n

The call was convened amid significant upheaval in the department as prosecutors in New York who\u2019d handled the matter, as well as some in Washington, resigned rather than agree to dispense with the case.<\/p>\n

According to the transcript of the February call, Bove remarked near the outset that interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon<\/a> \u201cresigned about ten minutes before we were going to put her on leave pending an investigation.\u201d But when asked at the hearing whether he had opened the meeting by emphasizing that Sassoon and another prosecutor had refused to follow orders and that Sassoon was going to be reassigned before she resigned, Bove answered with a simple, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Bove defended his testimony as accurate, noting that the transcript of the call shows he didn\u2019t use the word \u201creassigned\u201d when talking to the prosecutors.<\/p>\n

At another moment, Bove said he did not recall saying words that the transcript of the call reflects him as having said \u2014 that whoever signed the motion to dismiss the Adams case would emerge as leaders of the section.<\/p>\n

But in the letter to Grassley, Bove said he did not intend to suggest that anyone would be rewarded for submitting the memo but rather that doing so would reflect a willingness to follow the chain of command, something he said was the \u201cbare minimum required of mid-level management\u201d of a government agency.<\/p>\n

Republicans decry \u2018unfair accusations\u2019<\/p>\n

Grassley said Tuesday that he believes Bove will be a \u201cdiligent, capable and fair jurist.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his staff had tried to investigate the claims but that lawyers for the whistleblowers would not give them all of the materials they had asked for until Tuesday, hours before the vote. The \u201cvicious rhetoric, unfair accusations and abuse directed at Mr. Bove\u201d have \u201ccrossed the line,\u201d Grassley said. <\/p>\n

The first whistleblower complaint against Bove came from a former Justice Department lawyer who was fired in April after conceding in court that Kilmar Abrego Garcia<\/a>, a Salvadoran man who had been living in Maryland, was mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison. <\/p>\n

That lawyer, Erez Reuveni, described efforts by top Justice Department officials in the weeks before his firing to stonewall and mislead judges to carry out deportations championed by the White House. <\/p>\n

Reuveni described a Justice Department meeting in March concerning Trump\u2019s plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act<\/a> over what the president claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua<\/a>. Reuveni said Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could happen. Reuveni claims Bove used a profanity in saying the department would need to consider telling the courts what to do and \u201cignore any such order,\u201d Reuveni\u2019s lawyers said in the filing. <\/p>\n

Bove said he has \u201cno recollection of saying anything of that kind.\u201d <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Senate confirmed former Trump lawyer Emil Bove 50-49 for a lifetime appointment as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1927,9286,7919,2302,36761,3505,12,11165,25406,10767,793,36760,14270,2221,9289,1997,1999,3,111,12800,2226,10585,3438,21,19,11162,22,20,25,24,800],"class_list":["post-46776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-ap-top-news","tag-charles-schumer","tag-chuck-grassley","tag-courts","tag-danielle-sassoon","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-emil-bove","tag-erez-reuveni","tag-eric-adams","tag-general-news","tag-government-appointments-and-nominations","tag-kilmar-abrego-garcia","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-lisa-murkowski","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-susan-collins","tag-trials","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-u-s-republican-party","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-united-states-senate","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}