Politics
WATCH: Trump Judicial Nominee Delivers Powerful Rebuke Of Activist Judges
Emil Bove, a former senior Department of Justice Official and personal lawyer for President Trump, delivered a powerful statement on the weaponization of government and the role activist judges play during a confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Bove has been nominated to serve in a lifetime role as a judge on the Pennsylvania-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bove previously worked as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, where he led high-profile terrorism and drug trafficking cases through 2019. He later worked with current Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at his private practice, where the two worked on President Trump’s legal team as he battled a number of politically-motivated prosecutions between 2023 and 2024.
Both Bove and Blanche were seated beside the president in the highly controversial “hush money” case in Manhattan, which resulted in the only criminal conviction across four cases filed against the president by Democrat district attorneys and the Biden-led Department of Justice.
While speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Bove described his decision to defend President Trump as one of the most important of his life.
“I think really the most important thing is the ability to exercise independent judgment in the face of great scrutiny and criticism. And I am doing my best to explain why I’ve endeavored to do that throughout my career today. And I think there’s one moment in my life where I was really called upon to do that and make a hard decision that I’m glad I did,” he said.
“And that was to join Mr. Blanche to help represent the president at a time when my friends and even some people in my family, my work colleagues, told me that there was every reason to think I would get fired, I would be bankrupt, we would be indicted. All manner of evil and negative consequences were sort of foisted and thrown at Todd and I regularly as we had to make a decision that many others didn’t have the courage to make to stand up for what was right.”
Bove went on to say that his decision to represent Trump in the highly controversial case was not at all political. “That’s not what that was in the summer of 2023. At that time, for me and I think for Todd, that was a decision to fight for what was right and fight for the rule of law. And if I’m fortunate enough to become a judge, I will abide by that standard, applying the rule of law every single day.”