It was just a month ago that Trump's former lawyer, Emil Bove, said he "couldn't recall" suggesting that the Department of Justice should ignore court orders, saying, "fuck you" to the courts that interfered with the President's deportation orders. That information came from a whistleblower, and a lot has happened since then as Republicans try to ram Bove through for a lifetime appointment to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals without regard for ethics.
A third whistleblower has new information. The latest whistleblower appears to corroborate the first two, having shared evidence with lawmakers, suggesting that the controversial former attorney for Donald Trump and current top Justice Department official misled lawmakers during his confirmation hearing last month.
Via The Washington Post:
The information follows revelations from two other Justice Department whistleblowers who have said that Bove told subordinates in a meeting in March that they may need to ignore court orders that would hamper Trump’s campaign to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. One of those whistleblowers, ousted Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni, has since gone public with his account.
The new whistleblower has provided information about Bove’s behavior in a separate Justice Department matter.
“Emil Bove is a highly qualified judicial nominee who has done incredible work at the Department of Justice to help protect civil rights, dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Make America Safe Again,” said Justice Department spokesman Gates McGavick in a statement. “He will make an excellent judge — the Department’s loss will be the Third Circuit’s gain.”
Trump has nominated Bove — the President’s former defense attorney who represented him in three of the four criminal cases against him — to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, which takes cases from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands. Bove currently serves as a senior official at the Justice Department, where he has been at the center of controversial efforts to fire career prosecutors, craft legal strategy on immigration and drop federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
Senate Democrats have spent weeks trying to persuade Republicans to sink Bove’s nomination, arguing that he would prioritize the President’s agenda over properly enforcing the law. They also have complained that Republicans have rushed his nomination.
So far, Republicans have largely dismissed allegations against Bove, including the claims by Reuveni, who was fired in April after he admitted at a court hearing that the administration mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego García, an undocumented man living in Maryland. Abrego was flown to a prison in El Salvador despite court order barring the move. Officials charged him with two crimes related to human smuggling. He is in federal custody in the United States.
In his whistleblower complaint, Reuveni said Bove “stressed to all in attendance [at the March meeting] that the planes need to take off no matter what” and that Justice Department attorneys may have to tell judges “f--- you” and ignore court orders to achieve Trump’s immigration goals.
The second whistleblower has stepped forward to support Reuveni’s claims, stating that Bove and other senior DOJ officials were “actively and deliberately undermining the rule of law.”
“Our client, whose identity we are protecting, has provided substantive, internal DOJ documents to the Inspector General, supporting former senior DOJ attorney-turned whistleblower Erez Reuveni’s allegations,” Whistleblower Aid, the group representing the second whistleblower, said in a press release, according to The Hill.
Bove sounds so swampy. I'm starting to see a pattern here. Lying to the Senate is a crime, but Republicans do not care.
