Judicial Nominee Emil Bove Can’t Recall Whether He Said the DOJ Might Say ‘Fuck You’ To Court Orders
It’s not often that the word fuck comes up at a Senate confirmation hearing. But Sen. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.) said it six times during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s June 25 hearing on President Donald Trump’s nomination of Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
Schiff was not using that expletive to express his dismay at Bove’s nomination, which the Republican-controlled committee voted to advance on Thursday despite credible concerns about Bove’s respect for the rule of law. Rather, Schiff was quoting Justice Department whistleblower Erez Reuveni, who alleges that Bove, during a March 14 meeting about Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to summarily deport alleged gang members, “made a remark concerning the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated.” According to Reuveni, Bove “stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignor[ing] any such court order.”
That account goes to the heart of the objections raised by critics of Bove’s nomination, who include conservatives as well as progressives. Ed Whelan, former president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has expressed “serious doubts that Bove has the character and integrity to be worthy of confirmation as a federal judge.” The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board worries about Bove’s “reputation…as a smashmouth partisan who wields the law as a weapon.” New York Times columnist David French warns that Bove’s nomination reflects Trump’s preference for “judges who will do whatever it takes to curry favor with a president who values fealty above all.”
Reuveni’s account, which is backed up by contemporaneous internal communications, powerfully reinforces those concerns about Bove. When Bove suggested that the Justice Department could simply ignore any court orders against the AEA removals, Reuveni says, “others in the room looked stunned,” there were “awkward, nervous glances,” and “silence overtook the room.” But “notwithstanding Bove’s directive,” Reuveni “left the meeting understanding that [the Justice Department] would tell [the Department of Homeland Security] to follow all court orders.”
That understanding proved to be mistaken. The next day, the Trump administration began sending alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to a notorious prison in El Salvador, despite an injunction issued that day by James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Boasberg later concluded that the evidence “strongly support[s]” the conclusion that the government’s lawyers “willfully disobeyed” his order.
That conduct was consistent with another message that Reuveni says Bove delivered during that March 14 meeting. According to Reuveni, Bove “stressed to all in attendance that the planes [transporting AEA detainees] needed to take off no matter what.”
When Schiff asked Bove about those alleged remarks, the nominee was notably evasive. “I have no recollection of saying anything of that kind,” Bove said, referring to the “fuck you” quote. “I’ve certainly said things encouraging litigators at the
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