Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) spoke on the Senate floor to urge Senate Republicans to reject the dangerous nomination of Emil Bove to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, emphasizing Bove’s flawed actions and commitment to doing the bidding of the president.
In his speech, Schiff highlighted Bove’s patterns of misconduct and corruption, deeming him egregiously unfit for the role and underscoring the consequences of appointing a staunch Trump ally to a lifetime judicial appointment.
Watch his full remarks HERE. Download remarks HERE.
Read the transcript of his remarks as delivered below:
The Senate this week is considering a nominee so patently unfit to be a federal judge, so lacking in the temperament, integrity, and judgement to serve as an arbiter of the nation’s laws, that the chorus of opposition has grown deafening. And the facts revealing his unfitness for office are too voluminous to be ignored.
I’m speaking, of course, of Emil Bove, the lawyer whose misconduct was so egregious that his fellow prosecutors in the Southern District of New York thought he should be demoted.
Someone whose management of cases was so flawed that a federal judge not only concluded that his team had misled the court but that it withheld exculpatory evidence – and the court then ordered the case dismissed. And the Southern District Prosecutor’s Office didn’t even bother to try to refile the case. It was that tainted by Mr. Bove’s leadership of that team.
After Bove left the U.S. Attorney’s Office under the threat of demotion, he became one of Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyers, losing the hush money payment to a porn star case in which Donald Trump was convicted of dozens of felonies. Bove turned that loss, and his blind obedience to Trump, into a top position at the Department of Justice.
And now for the past six months, it seems like every time there’s been an abuse of power at the Justice Department, Emil Bove has either directed it, supervised it, or carried it out himself.
When Donald Trump wanted to purge the Justice Department of prosecutors who worked diligently to investigate the January 6 insurrection, Bove was the instrument of his vengeance. When Trump wanted to purge the department of prosecutors who had proved to juries beyond a reasonable doubt that the violent offenders who attacked police officers that day did so to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power, Emil Bove was there to punish not the criminals, but the prosecutors.
When Stephen Miller and then-FBI Director nominee Kash Patel worked to carry out an additional purge of career FBI officials who worked on the January 6 investigations, Emil Bove was there too.
Earlier this year, when the Trump administration wanted a justification to freeze grants already approved from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, and they wanted to trump up some justification, some rationale for trying to prevent the distribution of these funds, who did they turn to?
Well, of course, they turned to Emil Bove. He and then-interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin pressured the head of the Criminal Division for the DC U.S. Attorney’s Office to open a criminal investigation into the fund.
But there was a problem. There was no evidence of criminal activity. There was no probable cause. There was no predication.
And how do we know this? How do we know the opening of this case, or the threat of opening this case was bogus, because the chief of the Criminal Division in that office resigned rather than comply with this unethical edict.
When Trump’s DOJ sought to dismiss a serious and credible corruption case against the Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, who was the one who ordered career prosecutors to drop the case? That’s right, Emil Bove.
Time after time, we have seen career public servants stand up to abuses of power like this and refuse to obey. Leaving careers they loved at the Justice Department rather than be part of Bove’s perversion of justice.
I served for almost six years in the Justice Department. I know the sense of mission that the lawyers in that department feel, and how much they love serving and appearing before court and introducing themselves as on behalf the United States. It is not a job that people give up easily or for no reason. But I also know that when put in the position of choosing to follow their ethics and the law or choosing to obey a dishonorable and dishonest instruction from a supervisor, yes, they will resign their post, and so many have.
Acting U.S. Attorney, Danielle Sassoon, was ordered by Bove to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams. In refusing, she called it what it was: an “improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for the dismissal of his case.” In other words, a quid pro quo.
I just want to underscore for people what this means and how astonishingly abnormal, unethical this action was. The Justice Department intervened in a criminal case in New York over the objection of the prosecutors handling the case, including the acting U.S. Attorney, to dismiss that corruption case against a public official, not because there was a lack of evidence. They didn’t even try to claim that. Not because there was any prosecutorial misconduct. They didn’t even try to argue that. But because he was useful to the president on his immigration policy.
It is an edict from Bove that says, “if you do the president’s bidding, we’ve got your back. We’ll make your corruption case go away.” Quid pro quo. Now, interestingly, they didn’t want it to go away completely. They wanted it to go away without prejudice, that is, so they could bring it back if he didn’t do exactly what the president wanted. Anyone who’s ever served in the Justice Department could tell you just how unethical that is.
Rather than obey those orders from Bove, the acting U.S. Attorney Sassoon resigned. Many others followed.
One of them said, “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”
No, it didn’t have to be him, because it was enough for Emil Bove.
He is there, whenever Donald Trump needs someone to carry out his will, regardless of ethical or even legal considerations. And dedicated public servants, career prosecutors, are standing up to him, willing to risk their jobs, and willing to risk retaliation by a vindictive president.
Some of those brave attorneys have come to our committee as whistleblowers.
In one case, Erez Reuveni, a 15-year veteran at the Department, who worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations, shared with our committee that Emil Bove told DOJ lawyers they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘F*** You’ and ignore any such court order” that might get in the way of the Trump administration’s strategy of rapid deportation without due process. And in fact, Bove’s lawyers at DOJ would go on to lie to the judge and violate court orders, prompting the judge to issue an order to show cause why they should not be held in contempt.
And Senator Whitehouse is exactly right. The Court of Appeals has delayed that hearing on the order to show cause why those lawyers under Bove’s supervision should not be held in contempt. And my colleagues here want to rush this thing through. Well, what will they say if the judge finds that Bove and others at the Justice Department willfully ignored court orders. What will they say once they’ve given him a lifetime tenure on the Court of Appeals?
Now, during Bove’s confirmation hearing, I asked him about his ‘F*** you’ instruction, and he made the dubious claim that he couldn’t recall. Now, that’s remarkable. It’s not like we’re talking about events that happened 10 years ago. This was like two months ago, just a few weeks ago. I think I would remember if I had told other lawyers that we should say ‘F*** you’ to the courts.
So, either he instructs them frequently to say ‘F*** you’ to the court such that he wouldn’t remember this particular occasion, or he’s being dishonest with us. But his use of that vulgar injunction was corroborated by other DOJ lawyers in text messages. So we really don’t need to wonder about this. As one DOJ lawyer texted another, “Guess it’s find out time on the ‘F*** you.’”
Well, now it’s ‘find out time’ for the U.S. Senate where we find out whether we are willing to confirm just anybody, no matter how unfit, no matter how terrible the record, no matter how abundant the evidence. It is, ‘find out time’ for the U.S. Senate.
What was Bove’s role in tasking DOJ and FBI to scour old Epstein files and flag mentions of Trump? I know my colleague, Senator Booker has tried to find out, and Senator Durbin has tried to find out.
We don’t know, because Bove refuses to tell us. But we do know that his fellow criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche — he and Blanche were the two lawyers that represented Trump in that hush money payment to a porn star case. That Todd Blanche is now rushing to meet with Epstein’s chief co-conspirator in jail. It is self-evident that Blanche is there to represent the president’s personal interests, not the public interest. And Bove represents exactly the same problem.
With Bove’s nomination, we are about to find out if Republicans are content to give a man so routinely in defiance of the rule of law a lifetime job interpreting it on behalf of millions of Americans.
We wanted to hear from those whistleblowers, like Erez Reuveni, just some of the hundreds of public servants speaking out.
But Republicans declined our requests for testimony and additional hearings, even as they rushed to jam through this nominee for a lifetime position. Sadly, we will all have a lifetime to regret it.
Like so many of his unfit Cabinet nominees, Donald Trump is daring Senate Republicans to oppose him. I hope and pray they will. Because the pattern is clear.
Emil Bove takes orders from Donald Trump, and that is it. His only merit is blind obedience, not to the law, but to the president. And not just any president, but to one who is also a convicted felon.
And so I urge my colleagues — look at Bove’s record of disrespect for the law — and reject this dangerous nominee.
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