The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Emil Bove, Donald Trump’s former attorney who apparently told the Department of Justice to tell courts “fuck you,” to a full Senate vote for his nomination to the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals. Well, kinda.
“This is outrageous, this is unacceptable, this is wrong,” Booker said, demanding Grassley allow all Senators to speak and to debate the merits of the nominee, as well as to allow the committee to hear from a whistleblower that came forward with information about Bove’s alleged misconduct. “This is out of order,” he went on. “This is absolutely insane. What is the rush?”
The whistleblower, Erez Reuveni, has said that Bove told DOJ officials they may need to completely ignore the courts when it comes to immigration and deportation (disappearance) disputes. Increasingly, it appears the Republicans in the Senate are among the only people who actually want this nominee to move forward. First, a group of 75 former federal and state judges urged the committee to reject him this week, writing that his “egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.”
Then more than 900 former DOJ attorneys chimed in. “It is intolerable to us that anyone who disgraces the Justice Department would be promoted to one of the highest courts in the land, as it should be intolerable to anyone committed to maintaining our ordered system of justice,” they wrote. “We ask that before the Judiciary Committee votes on this nomination, you rigorously examine the actions Mr. Bove has taken at DOJ and the effects they’ve had on the Department’s integrity, employees, and mission-critical work.”
Grassley apparently didn’t like that advice, and the vote — as well as another 12-0 farce of a vote for Jeanine Pirro to be US Attorney for the District of Columbia — moved ahead immediately following the walkout.
“This is the world’s most deliberative body, and we can’t even debate a controversial judge, a judge that has been accused by a whistleblower of lying to the United States Senate, to lying to this committee,” Booker told the press afterward. “The checks and balances that are clearly spelled out by the founders of our democracy are now being undermined.”
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