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Emil Bove
American attorney (born 1981) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Emil Joseph Bove III (/eɪmɪl boʊˈviː/; AY-mill BOH-vee; born 1981) is an American attorney who is the designate to serve as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Bove has served as the principal associate deputy attorney general since 2025. He served as the acting U.S. deputy attorney general from January to March 2025.
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Bove studied public policy and economics at the University at Albany, SUNY and graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2008. He clerked for judges Richard J. Sullivan and Richard C. Wesley and became an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell before returning to federal employment as assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York in 2012. Bove was appointed co-chief of the office's terrorism and international narcotics unit in October 2019. He resigned in December 2021 and later joined Donald Trump's legal team in September 2023.
In November 2024, President-elect Trump named Bove principal associate deputy attorney general. He was appointed acting deputy attorney general when Trump took office in January 2025 and served in the position until Todd Blanche was confirmed in March. Bove has been involved in several controversies at the Department of Justice, including the dismissal of a criminal corruption case against New York City mayor Eric Adams and multiple whistleblower allegations that he suggested ignoring a federal court order to lawyers in a case involving the deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
In June 2025, Trump nominated Bove to fill a vacancy on the Third Circuit. His nomination drew opposition from over seventy-five former state and federal judges and over nine hundred former Department of Justice attorneys. Bove was confirmed by the Senate in July.
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Early life and education
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Emil Joseph Bove III[1] was born in 1981 in Geneva, New York,[2] and was raised in Seneca Falls, New York.[3] His father, Emil Bove Jr., is an attorney.[4] The elder Bove served as an assistant New York attorney general at the Rochester office.[1] In 1999, the younger Bove graduated salutatorian from Mynderse Academy, where he participated in the school's soccer, basketball, and lacrosse teams.[5] He went on to graduate from the University at Albany, SUNY summa cum laude in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in public policy and economics.[3] At SUNY Albany, Bove captained the Albany Great Danes men's lacrosse team. He was named the America East Conference Male Scholar Athlete in 2003.[6] After graduating, Bove worked as a paralegal in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York before leaving in 2005 to attend Georgetown University Law Center,[7] graduating in 2008 with a Juris Doctor.[3] He was the editor-in-chief of The Georgetown Law Journal's Annual Review of Criminal Procedure.[6]
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Career
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Clerkship and private practice (2008–2011)
From 2008 to 2009, Bove clerked for Judge Richard J. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.[1] The following year, he clerked for Judge Richard C. Wesley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.[8] After his clerkships, Bove was employed as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell.[9]
Assistant U.S. attorney and return to private practice (2012–2021)
In 2012, Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, hired Bove as an assistant United States attorney.[7] Bove was appointed co-chair of the office's terrorism and international narcotics unit in October 2019.[7] Prominent prosecutions Bove led included those against Nicolás Maduro,[10] Cesar Sayoc,[11] Tony Hernández,[12] Ahmad Khan Rahimi,[13] and Fabio Lobo.[14] In 2018, he sought a supervisory position; Bove was denied a promotion after a group of defense attorneys wrote a letter expressing concerns about his legal tactics.[15] Bove assisted in identifying numerous participants of the January 6 Capitol attack.[16] He resigned in December 2021.[17]
Bove joined Chiesa, Shahinian & Giantomasi in their New York City office in January 2022.[17] In September 2023, he became a partner at Blanche Law, a law firm founded by Todd Blanche. Days later, Bove joined Donald Trump's criminal defense team.[11] In the state court criminal trial of Trump in New York, he was second chair to Blanche on Trump's defense team.[18][19] Bove represented Trump in the federal classified documents and election obstruction cases.[20]
Department of Justice (2025–present)
On November 14, 2024, president-elect Donald Trump named Bove as principal associate deputy attorney general.[21] On January 20, 2025, Bove was appointed acting deputy attorney general.[22] Within days, he sent a memorandum threatening to prosecute local officials who refuse to comply with requests from the department following through on Trump's immigration policy.[23] Bove later stated that Carla B. Freedman, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, was investigating Tompkins County sheriff Derek Osborne, who allegedly allowed a Mexican citizen to be released from jail after pleading guilty to assault in the third degree.[24] That month, he instructed the leadership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to compile a list of prosecutors involved in criminal proceedings in the January 6 Capitol attack.[25] Hours later, over twelve federal prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia who investigated the attack were dismissed.[26] Bove moved to exert greater authority over the bureau, accusing acting director Brian Driscoll and his deputy, Robert Kissane, of "insubordination" in February for refusing to provide the list of names he requested.[27] According to The Wall Street Journal, he threatened to fire Driscoll.[28] Senator Dick Durbin accused Kash Patel of directing the dismissals of career civil servants that Bove carried out.[29]
Communications between federal prosecutors and New York City mayor Eric Adams's legal team had gone through Bove since he took office, according to The New York Times.[30] Bove dismissed federal corruption charges against Adams in February, arguing that the indictment interfered with the New York City Democratic mayoral primary.[31] The move to dismiss the case led to several resignations, including Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York,[32] Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney in the district, and five prosecutors associated with the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section, including John Keller, the acting head of the section, and Kevin Driscoll, who supervised the section as head of the Department of Justice's criminal division.[33] In her resignation letter, Sassoon alleged that Adams's lawyers had proposed a quid pro quo in which Adams would enforce the Trump administration's immigration policies in exchange for his case being dismissed, and that the Department of Justice had acquiesced.[34] In court, Bove told Judge Dale Ho that there was no quid pro quo.[35] When he dismissed the case, Ho stated that the situation "smacks of a bargain" where the indictment was dismissed "in exchange for immigration policy concessions".[36]
In June, Erez Reuveni, a former lawyer for the department, filed a whistleblower report alleging that Bove had alerted select department lawyers that Trump would soon invoke the Alien Enemies Act in order to deport Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. Bove purportedly stated that if a court order attempted to prevent the deportation flights, the Department of Justice would consider "telling the courts 'fuck you'" and "ignore any such order." The following day, in J.G.G. v. Trump, Judge James Boasberg ordered planes in the air to return; despite Reuveni's concerns about contempt of court, Bove allegedly told the Department of Homeland Security that the flights did not need to return.[37] In April, Boasberg ruled that there was probable cause to start criminal contempt proceedings involving non-custodial writs of habeas corpus, though he lacked jurisdiction over the Venezuelans,[38] and in June, he issued a separate ruling involving custodial writs of habeas corpus—which the court did have authority over—that the deportees had been deprived of their right to due process.[39] Reuveni's lawyers later released copies of text messages from the day of the flights and an email from the day after that supported his allegations. Tom Joscelyn and Ryan Goodman of Just Security wrote that the email and text messages implicate Bove in both contempt of court and violating due process rights.[38] Bove's tenure was widely viewed as controversial;[a] Bove acknowledged that some of his decisions "generated controversy", but said that the media were promoting a "wildly inaccurate caricature" of him.[44]
Nomination to court of appeals
In May 2025, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump was considering naming Bove as his nominee to occupy a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated by Joseph A. Greenaway Jr.[45][46] On May 28, Trump announced that he would nominate Bove to the appellate court.[47] His nomination was sent to the Senate on June 16.[46] Bove appeared before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on June 25.[48] The committee's chairman, Chuck Grassley, preemptively defended him from Erez Reuveni's allegations.[49] He faced questions over the decision to dismiss Eric Adams's case and the Department of Justice resignations that followed.[50] He was also questioned about Reuveni's allegations; Joscelyn and Goodman argue that if the allegations are true, then Bove made false statements in his testimony.[38] Grassley later characterized the allegations as nothing more than "aggressively litigating and interpreting court orders" on behalf of clients.[51]
In July, six former federal prosecutors for the District of Columbia sent a letter urging the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to reject Bove's nomination, referring to him as "the worst conceivable nominee" to be appointed for an indefinite judicial position.[52] The same month, more than seventy-five former state and federal judges wrote to the committee that Bove was disqualified on the basis of his "egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself". The judges expressed concern about Trump having nominated someone who had previously served as his personal lawyer and who might demonstrate "fealty" to Trump.[53] Other groups in opposition to his confirmation included the Society for the Rule of Law Institute[54] and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights,[55] while Republican attorneys general from twenty states supported Bove in a letter.[56] The day before the committee was scheduled to vote on whether to advance Bove's nomination, Justice Connection sent the committee a letter signed by over nine hundred former Department of Justice attorneys voicing "deep concern" about Bove's nomination; in response, senator Dick Durbin, the ranking member on the committee, encouraged the committee to postpone the vote.[57]
Two days before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's scheduled vote, Democratic members called to have Reuveni testify,[58] but the request was rebuffed.[59] On July 17, the committee voted to advance Bove's nomination. Prior to the vote, most of the Democrats on the committee walked out in protest, seeking to have further debate on the nomination prior to a committee vote.[60] Grassley stated that proceeding was no different than what Democrats had done years prior as the controlling party by cutting off debate regarding two of president Joe Biden's judicial nominees.[60] Durbin's spokesperson said that the Republicans had violated Senate rules and the Democrats would question the parliamentarian about whether the vote was valid.[59] Later that month, two other whistleblowers came forward, one with evidence that allegedly contradicts Bove's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony about the dismissal of the case against Eric Adams,[61] and another with evidence corroborating Reuveni's allegations.[51] Both whistleblowers provided evidence to the Justice Department's inspector general.[51][61]
On July 24, the Senate invoked cloture on his nomination in a 50–48 vote.[62] On July 29, the Senate voted to confirm Bove by a 50–49 vote. Every Republican senator, with the exception of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, voted to confirm him, while every Democratic senator opposed his nomination. Senator Bill Hagerty was not present to vote.[63] He is awaiting his judicial commission.[64]
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Personal life
In 2012, Bove married Sarah Samis in a ceremony officiated by Richard J. Sullivan.[1]
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