Emil

July 27 (UPI) — A second whistleblower has come forward in the appointment of Emil Bove to a lifetime appellate court judgeship, saying Bove directed attorneys to give false information and defy court orders.

Bove, a former member of President Donald Trump‘s criminal defense team in his fraud case in New York, is the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States. Trump nominated him for Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge in Philadelphia.

The second whistleblower, who is not named, is a career Department of Justice attorney and is represented by Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit legal organization that helps public- and private-sector workers report and expose wrongdoing. They disclosed evidence to the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General that corroborates the first whistleblower’s claims that Bove and other senior DOJ officials were “actively and deliberately undermining the rule of law,” Whistleblower Aid said.

“What we’re seeing here is something I never thought would be possible on such a wide scale: federal prosecutors appointed by the Trump Administration intentionally presenting dubious if not outright false evidence to a court of jurisdiction in cases that impact a person’s fundamental rights not only under our Constitution, but their natural rights as humans,” Whistleblower Aid Chief Legal Counsel Andrew Bakaj said in a statement.

“What this means is that federal career attorneys who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution are now being pressured to abdicate that promise in favor of fealty to a single person, specifically Donald Trump. Loyalty to one individual must never outweigh supporting and protecting the fundamental rights of those living in the United States,” he said.

The DOJ defended Bove.

“Emil Bove is a highly qualified judicial nominee who has done incredible work at the Department of Justice to help protect civil rights, dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Make America Safe Again,” spokesperson Gates McGavick told CNN. “He will make an excellent judge — the Department’s loss will be the Third Circuit’s gain.”

Bove has contradicted the complaints.

“I don’t think there’s any validity to the suggestion that that whistleblower complaint filed … calls into question my qualifications to serve as a circuit judge,” Bove told the Senate the committee during his confirmation hearing.

“I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” Bove said.

As Trump’s personal attorney, Bove defended him in his federal criminal cases, which were dismissed after his reelection. He also represented Trump in his New York hush-money case. In that case, he was found guilty of all 34 charges.

The previous whistleblower Erez Reuveni provided documents earlier this month saying that Bove is the person who gave the Trump administration the directive to ignore a court order to stop flights taking migrants to a Salvadoran prison. Bove allegedly said to prepare to tell the courts “f- you.” Bove told Congress he doesn’t remember using the F-word and sidestepped other questions about the incident.

Reuveni was fired from his job as the acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation after he disclosed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported in error. He worked for the DOJ for 15 years.

The Senate gave its preliminary approval for Bove’s appointment.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said “Even if you accept most of the claims as true, there’s no scandal here. Government lawyers aggressively litigating and interpreting court orders isn’t misconduct – it’s what lawyers do.”

WASHINGTON — A top Justice Department official nominated to become a federal appeals court judge said Wednesday that he never told department attorneys to ignore court orders, denying the account of a whistleblower who detailed a campaign to defy judges to carry out President Trump’s deportation plans.

Emil Bove, a former criminal defense attorney for the Republican president, forcefully pushed back against suggestions from Democrats that the whistleblower’s claims make him unfit to serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Bove’s nomination has come under intense scrutiny after the whistleblower, a fired department lawyer, claimed in a complaint made public Tuesday that Bove used an expletive when he said during a meeting that the Trump administration might need to ignore judicial commands.

“I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” Bove told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. He added: “I don’t think there’s any validity to the suggestion that that whistleblower complaint filed yesterday calls into question my qualifications to serve as a circuit judge.”

Bove was nominated last month by Trump to serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove was on the defense team during Trump’s New York hush money trial and defended Trump in the two federal criminal cases brought by the Justice Department.

The White House said Bove “is unquestionably qualified for the role and has a career filled with accolades, both academically and throughout his legal career, that should make him a shoo-in for the Third Circuit.”

“The President is committed to nominating constitutionalists to the bench who will restore law and order and end the weaponization of the justice system, and Emil Bove fits that mold perfectly,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in an email.

The whistleblower, Erez Reuveni, was fired in April after conceding in court that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who had been living in Maryland, was mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison. Reuveni sent a letter on Tuesday to members of Congress and the Justice Department’s inspector general seeking an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing by Bove and other officials in the weeks leading up to his firing.

Reuveni described a Justice Department meeting in March concerning Trump’s plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act over what the president claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Reuveni says Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could happen. Reuveni claims Bove used profanity in saying the department would need to consider telling the courts what to do and “ignore any such order,” Reuveni’s lawyers said in the letter.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called the allegations “utterly false,” saying that he was at the March meeting and “at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.”

“Planting a false hit piece the day before a confirmation hearing is something we have come to expect from the media, but it does not mean it should be tolerated,” Blanche wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

Bove has been at the center of other moves that have roiled the Justice Department in recent months, including the order to dismiss New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ federal corruption case. Bove’s order prompted the resignation of several Justice Department officials, including Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, who accused the department of acceding to a quid pro quo — dropping the case to ensure Adams’ help with Trump’s immigration agenda.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.