Emil Bove | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Bove in 2025 | |
| Judge of theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit | |
| Assumed office September 2, 2025 | |
| Appointed by | Donald Trump |
| Preceded by | Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. |
| United States Deputy Attorney General | |
Acting | |
| In office January 20, 2025 – March 6, 2025 | |
| President | Donald Trump |
| Preceded by | Lisa Monaco |
| Succeeded by | Todd Blanche |
| Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General | |
| In office January 20, 2025 – September 2, 2025 | |
| President | Donald Trump |
| Preceded by | Marshall Miller |
| Succeeded by | Jordan Fox |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Emil Joseph Bove III 1981 (age 44–45) Geneva, New York, U.S. |
| Spouse | |
| Education | University at Albany, SUNY (BA) Georgetown University (JD) |
Emil Joseph Bove III (/eɪmɪlboʊˈviː/;AY-millBOH-vee; born 1981) is an American attorney who has served as aUnited States circuit judge of theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since September 2025. Bove served as theprincipal associate deputy attorney general from January to September 2025. He served as the actingU.S. deputy attorney general from January to March 2025.
Bove studied public policy and economics at theUniversity at Albany, SUNY and graduated fromGeorgetown University Law Center in 2008. He clerked for judgesRichard J. Sullivan andRichard C. Wesley and became anassociate atSullivan & Cromwell before returning to federal employment asassistant 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 joinedDonald 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 untilTodd 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 againstEric Adams, themayor of New York City, and multiplewhistleblower allegations that he suggested ignoring afederal court order to lawyers in a case involving the deportation ofVenezuelans toEl Salvador.
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 theSenate in July. He continued serving as the principal associate deputy attorney general until his swearing-in in September.
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Emil Joseph Bove III[1] was born in 1981 inGeneva, New York,[2] and was raised inSeneca Falls, New York.[3] His father, Emil Bove Jr., is an attorney.[4] The elder Bove served as anassistant New York attorney general at theRochester office.[1] In 1999, the younger Bove graduatedsalutatorian fromMynderse Academy, where he participated in the school's soccer, basketball, and lacrosse teams.[5] He went on to graduate from theUniversity at Albany, SUNYsumma cum laude in 2003 with aBachelor of Arts in public policy and economics.[3] At SUNY Albany, Bove captained theAlbany Great Danes men's lacrosse team. He was named theAmerica East Conference Male Scholar Athlete in 2003.[6] After graduating, Bove worked as aparalegal in theU.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York before leaving in 2005 to attendGeorgetown University Law Center,[7] graduating in 2008 with aJuris Doctor.[3] He was the editor-in-chief ofThe Georgetown Law Journal's Annual Review of Criminal Procedure.[6]
From 2008 to 2009, Boveclerked for JudgeRichard J. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.[1] The following year, he clerked for JudgeRichard C. Wesley of theU.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.[8] After his clerkships, Bove was employed as an associate atSullivan & Cromwell.[9]
In 2012,Preet Bharara, theU.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, hired Bove as anassistant 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 againstNicolás Maduro,[10]Cesar Sayoc,[11]Tony Hernández,[12]Ahmad Khan Rahimi,[13] andFabio 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 theJanuary 6 Capitol attack.[16] He resigned in December 2021.[17]
Bove joined Chiesa, Shahinian & Giantomasi in theirNew York City office in January 2022.[17] In September 2023, he became apartner at Blanche Law, a law firm founded byTodd Blanche. Days later, Bove joinedDonald Trump's criminal defense team.[11] In the state courtcriminal trial of Trump in New York, he was second chair to Blanche on Trump's defense team.[18][19] Bove represented Trump in the federalclassified documents andelection obstruction cases.[20]
On November 14, 2024, president-elect Donald Trump named Bove asprincipal associate deputy attorney general.[21] On January 20, 2025, Bove was appointed actingdeputy 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'simmigration policy.[23] Bove later stated thatCarla B. Freedman, theU.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, was investigatingTompkins 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 theFederal Bureau of Investigation to compile a list of prosecutors involved incriminal proceedings in the January 6 Capitol attack.[25] Hours later, over twelve federal prosecutors in theU.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 directorBrian Driscoll and his deputy,Robert Kissane, of "insubordination" in February for refusing to provide the list of names he requested.[27] According toThe Wall Street Journal, he threatened to fire Driscoll.[28] SenatorDick Durbin accusedKash Patel of directing the dismissals of career civil servants that Bove carried out.[29]
Communications between federal prosecutors and the legal team ofEric Adams, themayor of New York City, had gone through Bove since he took office, according toThe New York Times.[30] Bove dismissedfederal corruption charges against Adams in February, arguing that the indictment interfered with theNew York City Democratic mayoral primary.[31] The move to dismiss the case led to severalresignations, includingDanielle Sassoon, the actingU.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'sPublic 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'scriminal division.[33] In her resignation letter, Sassoon alleged that Adams's lawyers had proposed aquid pro quo in which Adams would enforce theTrump administration's immigration policies in exchange for his case being dismissed, and that the Department of Justice had acquiesced.[34] In court, Bove told JudgeDale Ho that there was noquid 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 theAlien Enemies Act in order to deportVenezuelans to a prison inEl 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, inJ.G.G. v. Trump, JudgeJames Boasberg ordered planes in the air to return; despite Reuveni's concerns about contempt of court, Bove allegedly told theDepartment 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-custodialwrits ofhabeas corpus, though he lacked jurisdiction over the Venezuelans,[38] and in June, he issued a separate ruling involving custodial writs ofhabeas corpus—which the court did have authority over—that the deportees had been deprived of theirright 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 andRyan Goodman ofJust 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]
In May 2025,The New York Times reported that Donald Trump was considering naming Bove as his nominee to occupy a seat on theU.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated byJoseph 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 theSenate 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 theLeadership 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, senatorDick 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 presidentJoe 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 invokedcloture 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 ofSusan Collins andLisa Murkowski, voted to confirm him, while every Democratic senator opposed his nomination. SenatorBill Hagerty was not present to vote.[63] Bove received his judicial commission on August 20, but was not immediately sworn in. He continued to work at the Department of Justice through that time.[64] Bove was sworn in on September 2.[65]
In 2012, Bove married Sarah Samis in a ceremony officiated by Richard J. Sullivan.[1]
Works by or aboutEmil Bove atWikisource| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Marshall Miller | Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General 2025 | Succeeded by Jordan Fox |
| Preceded by | United States Deputy Attorney General Acting 2025 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Judge of theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit 2025–present | Incumbent |