The primary accusation against Bove is that he encouraged subordinates to ignore district court orders that unconstitutionally blocked the President from exercising his Executive authority under Article II, United States Constitution.
Here's a WaPo story on it. It's paywalled, so I will post as much as I can. It's a whole lot of hearsay.
Former D.C. U.S. prosecutors oppose Emil Bove appeals court nomination
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote soon on Bove, a former Trump lawyer and senior Justice Department official.
Spencer S. Hsu | July 8, 2025A group of former federal prosecutors for the District of Columbia urged the Senate in a letter sent Monday evening to reject the nomination of Emil Bove for an appeals court judgeship in Philadelphia, calling the former personal lawyer for President Donald Trump “the worst conceivable nominee” for a lifetime judicial post.
The signers of the letter previously led a similar effort by more than 100 former assistant U.S. attorneys to oppose Trump’s nomination of Ed Martin as U.S. attorney for Washington. They now argue Bove’s conduct is “far worse and more dangerous.” In key instances, Martin as acting U.S. attorney was following the orders of Bove, a senior Justice Department official, they said.
Bove “has demonstrated a willingness to ignore his oath to the Constitution and to disregard the Rule of Law in an effort to conform to every possible whim of the President,” wrote letter organizers Dan Toomey, former president of the D.C. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Association and a prosecutor from 1968 to 1971, and Charles R. Work, a Reagan presidential appointee and former president of the D.C. Bar. Five other former federal prosecutors who previously served under both Republican and Democratic administrations joined the letter.
“How can Bove be trusted to be fair and impartial in reviewing the appellate cases before him when they conflict with the Trump Administration’s desires?” the former prosecutors wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee. They said they were sending the letter now before polling former prosecutors who opposed Martin because of how quickly Bove’s nomination was moving.
Trump in May nominated Bove to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, a court that covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
“Emil is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone,” Trump wrote of the former assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan. “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!”
His nomination has come under fire after a former Justice Department immigration lawyer, Erez Reuveni, brought a whistleblower complaint last month stating that he witnessed Bove telling subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to carry out the Trump administration’s deportation strategy. Reuveni described three instances in which department officials ignored such orders, presented legal arguments with no basis in law or misrepresented facts to the court.
One instance involved sending a planeload of more than 100 Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members to a high-security prison in El Salvador.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on June 25, where Bove drew support from the Republican-led panel, he denied suggesting there would be any need to consider ignoring court orders.
“I am not anyone’s henchman. I am not an enforcer,” Bove testified. As a judge, he said, he would “exercise restraint and not make policy decisions.” He said serving as a criminal defense lawyer for Trump “was a decision to fight for what was right, and fight for the rule of law.” A representative for Bove did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday evening.
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) defended Bove, saying that the “some of the rhetoric aimed at Mr. Bove by the media, and even by members of this committee, has crossed the line.”
Bove, the top aide to the current No. 2 Justice Department official, former Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, was acting deputy attorney general earlier this year before Blanche was confirmed by the Senate.
Bove has been at the center of some of the Justice Department’s most controversial actions, including a push to drop federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams after he offered to support the Trump administration’s immigration policies. More than a half-dozen Justice Department attorneys resigned in protest, including the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and most of the senior leadership of the Justice Department’s public integrity division, which prosecutes corruption crimes.
Bove also directed Martin to fire prosecutors who handled cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and who were still on probationary status. Bove also ordered the firing of at least eight senior FBI officials who oversaw intelligence, national security, cyber investigations, and the bureau’s science and technology branch.
The former officials in the letter opposing Bove’s judicial nomination cited those actions, as well as the Feb. 17 resignation of the head of the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., Denise Cheung, who said she refused to carry out what she wrote was Martin and Bove’s demand to freeze the bank accounts of a $20 billion Biden administration environmental grant program without sufficient evidence.
“There is no logical or material distinction between the actions of Bove or those of Martin” in the firing of the Capitol riot prosecutors and the improper environmental grant investigation, the Toomey and Work letter stated.
The letter asked the Judiciary Committee to reject Bove’s nomination or require him to answer all questions under oath, produce written records as requested by senators and investigate Reuveni’s allegations.
“Surely this testimony would not unduly delay the Committee’s work but rather would demonstrate that the Committee will fairly consider all of the relevant evidence, and not rubber stamp this nomination,” the former prosecutors wrote. Better to know the truth now, they said, than at Reuveni’s potential wrongful termination trial, when more facts would emerge.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote later this month on sending Bove’s nomination to the full Senate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/07/08/prosecutors-oppose-bove-judge-nomination/
