Judiciary
Trump nominates his lawyer Emil Bove to 3rd Circuit
Emil Bove, an attorney for President Donald Trump, sits in Manhattan criminal court during Trump’s sentencing in the hush-money case in New York City on Jan. 10, 2025. (Photo by Jeenah Moon/Pool photo via the Associated Press)
The Department of Justice attorney who directed the dismissal of charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams will be nominated to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Philadelphia, President Donald Trump said Wednesday.
The nominee, Emil Bove, is currently the principal associate deputy attorney general. He previously served as Trump’s personal attorney and was once an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The Associated Press, Bloomberg Law, Law360, Law.com, Politico and the New York Times are among the publications with coverage.
In private practice, Bove defended Trump in his trial for falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment and represented Trump in the now-dropped federal cases related to his handling of classified documents and election-fraud claims.
“Emil is smart, tough and respected by everyone,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, in announcing the nomination. “He will end the weaponization of justice, restore the rule of law, and do anything else that is necessary to, Make America Great Again. Emil Bove will never let you down!”
Politico described Bove as one of Trump’s “closest and most truculent legal allies.” The New York Times reports that during his short time in the DOJ, Bove “emerged as a stoic and unyielding enforcer of the president’s agenda.”
Bove’s call for dismissal of charges against Adams led at least 11 federal prosecutors to leave, according to past media coverage.
At the DOJ, Bove also threatened to prosecute state and local officials who didn’t cooperate in immigration enforcement and wrote a memo supporting the firing of federal prosecutors who pursued cases against people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.
The leading Democrat on the Senate Judicial Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, said in a statement he was “deeply concerned” about the nomination. Bove’s activities “are part of a broader pattern by President Trump and his allies to undermine the traditional independence of the Justice Department and the rule of law,” Durbin said.
Among the groups opposing Bove’s nomination is the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. In a statement, the group’s senior director of its fair court program, Lena Zwarensteyn, called Bove “unfit to serve in our judiciary” and said his leadership at the DOJ has been “disastrous for our communities.”
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