Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Emil Bove’s judicial nomination Thursday, July 17, the last step in the process before a final vote by the full chamber. If confirmed, Bove, 44, will hold a lifetime position as a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Jersey.
Bove is a controversial nominee who has been accused of professional misconduct by a whistleblower. As principal associate deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice, he fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. He also dismissed corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Critics said the Trump administration dropped that case in exchange for Adams’ cooperation with immigration raids.
Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, called the rhetoric and treatment directed at Bove unfair. Bove has categorically denied any wrongdoing.
“There is a wildly inaccurate caricature of me in the mainstream media,” Bove said during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, June 25. “I am not anybody’s henchman, I am not an enforcer.”
Democrats walked out of the Judiciary Committee’s hearing after Grassley called for a vote before giving each member a chance to speak. Democrats said that violated committee rules.
“I hope that someone on the other side will wake up to the reality this man should not be on the federal court for the rest of his life,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told reporters. “He is a smash-mouth partisan, and he’s shown that over and over again, and to put him in that kind of position of power in terms of the future of this country is a mistake.”
Confirmation likely
It is exceedingly unlikely that the Senate will reject Bove’s nomination. He needs 51 votes for confirmation, and Republicans hold 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats.
A group of former federal prosecutors opposed to the nomination wrote a letter to Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., hoping to persuade him to vote against Bove at the committee level. He didn’t. Tillis is retiring at the end of his term and may feel less pressure to follow the party line. However, he said he supported Bove regardless.
A whistleblower accused Bove of telling subordinates that the Department of Justice may need to ignore court orders in order to carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda. Durbin released phone logs and emails from the whistleblower to back up the claims.
But Tillis was critical of the release that was made just as he announced he would support Bove.
“To me, when you got a real story, a news outlet breaks it,” Tillis said. “The fact that it was broken from the committee suggests to me it’s another sort of Kavanaugh sort of moment, and I’m not going to be dissuaded by that.”
Tillis was referring to the 2018 confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in high school.
Opposition not effective
Bove’s credentials were called into question by a group of more than 900 former Department of Justice attorneys, who asked Judiciary Committee members to take more time before voting on his nomination.
TTheir letter referred to Bove as a “leader in this assault” against career, nonpartisan employees at the department.
Their effort does not appear to have made a difference.
“This seems to me like a classic sort of leftist technique,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told Straight Arrow News. “I mean, people write letters all the time.”
Hawley added, “He’ll pass.”
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Cassandra Buchman
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://straightarrownews.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
