Senate confirms Trump lawyer Emil Bove for appeals court, pushing past
whistleblower claims
[July 30, 2025]
By MARY CLARE JALONICK and ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed former Trump lawyer Emil Bove
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.
A former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove
was on Trump’s legal team during his New York hush money trial 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.
Democrats have vehemently opposed Bove’s 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.
Bove has accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand
over the names of agents who investigated the attack and ordered the
firing of a group of prosecutors involved in those Jan. 6 criminal
cases.
Whistleblowers cite evidence against Bove
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 claim that Bove
denies — 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.
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.
The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the whistleblower
has not made the recording public. The whistleblower’s claims were first
reported by the Washington Post.
None of that evidence has so far been enough to sway Senate Republicans
— all but two of them voted to confirm Bove as GOP senators have
deferred to Trump on virtually all of his picks.
Democrats say Bove's confirmation is a 'dark day'
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that Bove's
confirmation is a “dark day” and that Republicans are only supporting
Bove because of his loyalty to the president.
“It's 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,” Schumer said.
Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
voted against Bove's confirmation. “I don’t think that somebody who has
counseled other attorneys that you should ignore the law, you should
reject the law, I don’t think that that individual should be placed in a
lifetime seat on the bench,” Murkowski said Tuesday.
At his confirmation hearing last month, Bove addressed criticism of his
tenure head-on, telling lawmakers he understands some of his decisions
“have generated controversy.” But Bove said he has been inaccurately
portrayed as Trump’s “henchman” and “enforcer” at the department.
In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee released Tuesday evening
just before the vote, Bove said he does not have the whistleblower’s
recording but is “undeterred by this smear campaign.”
A February call emerges as evidence
Senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing asked Bove about the
February 14 call with lawyers in the Justice Department’s 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’s
behalf the motion to dismiss the case against Adams.
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, right,
greets Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as the panel meets to advance
President Donald Trump's nominees for the federal bench, including
Emil Bove, Trump's former defense lawyer, at the Capitol in
Washington, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The call was convened amid significant upheaval in the department as
prosecutors in New York who’d handled the matter, as well as some in
Washington, resigned rather than agree to dispense with the case.
According to the transcript of the February call, Bove remarked near
the outset that interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon
“resigned about ten minutes before we were going to put her on leave
pending an investigation.” 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,
“No.”
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’t use the word “reassigned”
when talking to the prosecutors.
At another moment, Bove said he did not recall saying words that the
transcript of the call reflects him as having said — that whoever
signed the motion to dismiss the Adams case would emerge as leaders
of the section.
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 “bare minimum required of
mid-level management” of a government agency.
Republicans decry ‘unfair accusations’
Grassley said Tuesday that he believes Bove will be a “diligent,
capable and fair jurist.”
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 “vicious rhetoric, unfair accusations and abuse directed at Mr.
Bove” have “crossed the line,” Grassley said.
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 Salvadoran man who had been
living in Maryland, was mistakenly deported to an El Salvador
prison.
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.
Reuveni described a Justice Department meeting in March concerning
Trump’s plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act over what the
president claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de
Aragua. 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 “ignore any such order,” Reuveni’s
lawyers said in the filing.
Bove said he has “no recollection of saying anything of that kind.”
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Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.
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