The Emil Bove Saga Isn’t Over Yet

Americans can have widely different views on the ideal traits of a federal judicial nominee. Some Americans prefer conservatives; others want a liberal mindset on the bench. They want tough-on-crime jurists or reform-oriented ones, originalists or living constitutionalists, disciples of Antonin Scalia or admirers of William Brennan, and so on. At the very minimum, however, is the expectation that federal judges will actually respect the rule of law and abide by judicial orders themselves. If a judge doesn’t, after all, why should anyone else?

Bove denied the allegations and said that he did not answer senators untruthfully when asked about the deportations during his confirmation hearing. Other whistleblowers have since come forward to confirm Reuveni’s account of the meeting. That sounds like it would be a good reason to slow down the nomination and look into things a little more closely. This is, after all, a lifetime federal judgeship. Since the Supreme Court only handles a few dozen cases a year nowadays, courts like the Third Circuit effectively have the final say in the overwhelming majority of federal lawsuits.

Instead, Senate Republicans did not bother to seriously probe the claims and dismissed them as (in their view) yet another Democratic-led attempt to torpedo a conservative judicial nominee. That included Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a self-professed ally of whistleblowers, who claimed that he thought Bove would be a “diligent, capable, and fair jurist” and brushed aside Reuveni’s allegations that suggested otherwise.