Fool Me Once ...
I held out a measure of trust for Senate Republicans yet again. I hope I have learned my lesson this time.
I’m a fool. Every time there is an opportunity for Republicans to prove that they’re not all corrupted by the power of their cult leader, I hold out hope. And each time I hold out hope, those hopes are soon dashed.
The most recent — but certainly not the last — of these opportunities is the U.S. Senate confirmation of Emil Bove in a lifetime appointment as a judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Bove is best known as the losing attorney who defended Donald Trump in his New York criminal trial — the trial in which Trump was convicted of 34 felonies.
In the hearings leading up to the confirmation vote in the Senate, there were not one, not two, but three whistleblowers who pulled back the veil on his actions and behavior in his brief time in the Department of Justice in the first part of Trump’s second term.
Despite his background as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, he is reported to have told his DOJ underlings that they could ignore court rulings about Donald Trump’s brutal immigration strategy. In a saner time, this alone would have been more than enough to sink any nomination to one of the highest courts in the land.
But his resume continues:
Bove fired all the DOJ prosecutors who painstakingly brought hundreds of insurrectionists to justice after the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
He halted the corruption case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams, with no rationale except that a claim that putting Adams on trial would impinge on the Trump administration’s ability to carry out deportations in New York. I would call that reasoning specious, but that would imply that there’s some surface-level appearance of legitimacy to that claim.
At best, the nomination of Bove for this prestigious judicial role is cronyism in its worst form. At worst, it’s far more sinister.
In Trump’s first term, when he was unable to get his Attorneys General (first Jeff Sessions and then James Comey) to bend entirely to his will, he is reported to have said, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump was disgruntled (is he ever not disgruntled?) that he was unable to hold total sway over the Department of Justice.
With Bove’s confirmation, Trump may very well have found his new Roy Cohn, only with more actual power than Cohn ever wielded. U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals are the last stop on the judicial train before the Supreme Court. They issue opinions as to whether the law has been applied properly when the decisions of lower courts are appealed. Justices in these courts have traditionally been expected to be highly experienced, unbiased non-partisan jurists. Bove possesses none of those traits.
Worse still, Presidents often look to the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals when considering nominees for vacancies on the Supreme Court. I shudder to think what might happen should there be another vacancy during Trump’s time in office.
I hope someone reminds me of the Bove confirmation the next time I’m wishing that maybe, just maybe, Republicans will do the right thing. Don’t just remind me. You have my permission to slap me if I confer any credibility on this crop of Senate Republicans. I truly don’t want to keep having my unwarranted optimism smashed on the treacherous rocks of the Trump administration.