Emil Bove, thumbing his nose at America, is making a mockery of the rule of law

Attending Trump's rally on Tuesday, Judge Emil Bove let it be known that his DOJ actions were just the beginning. Bove must face accountability, and ultimately impeachment.

Emil Bove should not be a federal judge and must face accountability for his actions as both a lawyer and judge.

His lack of concern — or outright disdain — for the rule of law was abundantly clear throughout his short time in the leadership of the Justice Department.

His unfitness to be a federal judge has only become more apparent since he was confirmed, as more information has come to light about his time at DOJ — but also in his actions since becoming a federal appellate judge.

On Tuesday night, Bove’s mocking of the rule of law reached a new low, as the federal judge attended President Donald Trump’s political rally in Pennsylvania “as a citizen coming to watch the president speak,” he told Vaughn Hillyard.

It was a rally in which Trump lied from the stage at one point that Rep. Ilhan Omar is “here illegally” and suggested that the government, of which he is the head of the executive branch, should “throw her the hell out.”

As the audience responded with chants of “Throw her out!” and “Send her back!“ Bove sat on watching, as seen in video captured by Hillyard.

President Donald Trump talks about "throw[ing] out" Rep. Ilhan Omar (image from video posted by Aaron Rupar), as Third Circuit Judge Emil Bove looks on (image from video posted by Vaughn Hillyard).

As Fix the Court’s Gabe Roth detailed in a judicial complaint submitted to the Third Circuit’s chief judge on Wednesday, “It should have been obvious to Judge Bove, either at the start of the rally or fairly close to it, that this was a highly charged, highly political event that no federal judge should have been within shouting distance of.“

Roth argues that Bove’s attendance violates judicial ethics canons and that he should be “admonished for his behavior” and face any other discipline “deem[ed] fit.” Roth also noted, but did not opine on, “question[s] of recusal“ in Trump-related cases that are almost certain to arise — appropriately so — following Bove’s attendance at the rally.

This is just the start of the necessary response to Bove’s actions over the course of this year, however, given that he has made it abundantly clear he is manifestly unfit to be a government official, let alone a federal appellate judge.

As soon as possible, Bove must face impeachment proceedings.

Bove never should have been nominated by Trump to be a federal judge, but Trump’s antipathy toward the rule of law is just a fact at this point. Bove was his kind of criminal defense lawyer, was his kind of DOJ lawyer, and is his kind of judge.

Having been nominated to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the U.S. Senate then bore the responsibility to stop it. It needed to reject Bove’s nomination. Every Democratic senator did so in July, as did Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. There were 49 votes against confirming this man.

But, 50 Republicans voted yes, and Bove was confirmed.

Now Judge Bove, he quickly made clear that his partisanship will not end while wearing his judicial robes, from his first opinion — dissenting from an October 14 decision by the full Third Circuit that it would not rehear a voting rights case over a Pennsylvania requirement that an undated-but-signed mail-in ballot be thrown out. Both the district court and three-judge panel of the appeals court found the requirement to be unconstitutional.

In his dissent, filed 10 days after the court denied en banc review, Bove openly mocked the arguments of those who successfully brought the challenge. He wrote:

For a voter with a functioning pen, sufficient ink, and average hand dexterity, this should take less than five seconds. Yet Plaintiffs narrowed in on this decades-old requirement situated within a package of recently reformed Pennsylvania laws, known as “Act 77,” that established universal mail-in voting and other protections. These five seconds, Plaintiffs alleged, violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

This was in marked contrast to the earlier-filed dissent from Judge Peter Phipps, a 2019 Trump appointee, who merely detailed the legal reasons why he believed the case should have been reheard en banc.

A month later, in a court filing DOJ submitted on November 25 as part of Chief Judge James Boasberg’s inquiry into whether anyone in the Trump administration should face a criminal contempt referral for the decision not to turn around the Alien Enemies Act flights on March 15, DOJ acknowledged that Bove was one of two DOJ lawyers who provided the Department of Homeland Security with legal advice that night. The document asserted that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem made the decision not to turn the flights around.

Under a December 5 deadline set by Boasberg for declarations to be submitted by the government, Noem, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and DHS Acting General Counsel Joseph Mazzara submitted declarations about the decision.

Bove also submitted his own “non-party” declaration — acknowledging that he provided DHS with legal advice that day.

Bove signed the declaration as coming from “Honorable Emil Bove, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit” and acknowledged that DOJ “has not authorized me to disclose privileged information in this declaration.“

On Monday, Boasberg granted Bove leave to file the declaration.

The next day, the “Honorable Emil Bove” attended a Trump rally where the president falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election, called former president Joe Biden a “son of a bitch,” and discussed the possibility of his running unconstitutionally for a third term in 2028 to a chant of “four more years” from the crowd.

And there was Bove, quite literally in the middle of it all.