Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday largely backed President Donald Trump’s choice of his former criminal defense attorney Emil Bove for a lifetime appointment to an appellate court, as Democrats used a confirmation hearing to question if he acted as a political agent on Trump’s behalf in his current Justice Department role.
Democrats asked about a whistleblower accusation that Bove in March contemplated defying possible future federal court orders on immigration, about whether he had moved to dismiss a federal corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for immigration enforcement concessions, and about the firing of federal prosecutors who worked on the prosecutions of rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, said that compared to other judicial picks from Trump’s first term, Bove “is in a category all of his own.”
