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Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am here with a number of colleagues on probably one of the most important decisions we are going to make with respect to the future of justice in America: the nomination of Emil Bove to be a judge on the court of appeals for the Third Circuit, the second highest panel in our judiciary.
And he is about as unfit and unqualified as any judicial nominee to come before this body in my 15 years here. And I say that with sadness as well as anger, as someone who still proudly would call myself a litigator, a trial lawyer, and a member of the Judiciary Committee, where I am proud to serve with my great colleague, the ranking member now, Senator Durbin.
And he and others from that committee will come before us tonight. We are here not only on the merits of Mr. Bove but also because we were denied an opportunity in the committee to present fairly and fully our case against Mr. Bove based on the record, and we were denied an opportunity to elicit from the Department of Justice and the administration the facts that are necessary to evaluate his nomination.
We were denied the opportunity to have a whistleblower come before the committee, a whistleblower who bravely came forward with facts showing how Mr. Bove suggested--indeed, urged--that lawful court orders be disobeyed; that the Department of Justice ought to tell the courts to eff themselves.
We were denied access to an Office of Professional Responsibility investigation bearing on this nomination: an OPR inquiry into the failure of the team supervised by Mr. Bove to divulge to the defense exculpatory evidence, as they were obligated to do, during a prosecution when he was an assistant U.S. attorney.
And Mr. Bove himself, in the hearing that we conducted, was evasive, obfuscating. He refused point-blank to answer relevant questions.
One of my colleagues, Senator Whitehouse, who will be here tonight, characterized it as the ``deliberative process privilege.'' There is no deliberative process privilege, and Mr. Bove had no right to refuse to answer our questions about what he has done in his role during the first 6 months of this administration.
The fact is, he has been involved in a pattern of lawlessness and recklessness, a violation of individual rights and liberties, a pattern of corruption unprecedented in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice. And he has been integral to it, participating actively in it.
We have opposed other nominees because we disagree with their judicial philosophy. We have opposed them because they were out of the mainstream; they were ideologues with an ax to grind that was potentially detrimental to rights and liberties.
Mr. Bove is in a different category. Yes, he is conservative. He is out of the mainstream. But he is corrupt. He is dangerous, vindictive, and revengeful in a way that this administration has made a pattern of doing.
So I am here to urge my colleagues to stand with us and oppose this nomination. I know the strong dynamic--we have seen it again and again and again, no matter how many doubts my colleagues may have--to toe the line in thrall of President Trump or in fear of him. But the record here speaks powerfully--or it should--to our conscience and conviction.
This nominee epitomizes the Trump demand for loyalty and fealty above all else to him, a sense that he has the power to do what no ordinary American can expect from judges or from prosecutors; that they will, in effect, rig the system in his favor, as Mr. Bove has done while representing, supposedly, the Department of Justice because he was-- like Pam Bondi and others who have taken senior positions--a lawyer, in fact, for President Trump, his personal lawyer, defending him against claims in his personal capacity before he took this role in the Department of Justice.
A lot has been made of Mr. Bove's role in dismissing the case against Eric Adams, the mayor of New York. I am not going to go through all the details except to say that Danielle Sassoon refused to make the argument in favor of dismissing those charges in exchange for concessions on immigration policy. She said it was ``an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal.''
The lead prosecutor on the Adams case resigned rather than take Mr. Bove's order, and he, too, said that it would be a violation of conscience and conviction and that anyone ``who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion'' should not do so.
The judge indicates ``everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.'' He called Mr. Bove's position ``fundamentally incompatible with the basic promise of equal justice under law''--a quid pro quo deal. But Mr. Bove said it was fine.
Even more disgracefully, he said a court cannot review, at all, a dismissal of this kind. This attitude toward the law alone should disqualify him, but he went further in a March meeting, according to the whistleblower. He said, essentially, that lawful court orders shouldn't be obeyed. That is the nominee for a judgeship saying that judges ought to be defied.
He should not be under consideration for this lifetime appointment for these reasons and others that my colleagues who are coming to the floor tonight will describe in detail. The short-circuiting and straitjacketing of the consideration of Mr. Bove will be a stain on the U.S. Senate. And make no mistake, we will rue the day--my colleagues will--if they vote for this nominee.
And we should not in any way turn a blind eye toward the other nominees that will be before us for the district court: Josh Divine, Maria Lanahan, Jordan Pratt--all nominated to serve as district court judges on the Federal bench. They have made careers of crusading against reproductive rights.
Judge Pratt wrote an amicus brief supporting Florida's 15-week abortion ban. He called the procedure ``barbaric'' and ``one of the most severe invasions of personal rights imaginable.''
Judge Pratt went so far as to raise questions not put before the court by parties and invite the Florida attorney general to intervene and weigh in on these questions.
He wrote an opinion holding unconstitutional a Florida law that allows minors to seek abortions without parental consent through judicial waivers. The case didn't require a court to rule on the law's constitutionality, but Judge Pratt took it upon himself to do so.
And Mr. Divine led and Ms. Lanahan worked on Missouri's legal challenge against mifepristone. The science is clear: Mifepristone is safe. Yet Mr. Divine and Ms. Lanahan didn't hesitate--not at all--to challenge its approval. And their court filing cited two research studies, mere weeks after he filed the complaint, that were retracted due to a lack of scientific rigor, problematic methodology, and undisclosed bias.
Edward Artau, nominated for the Southern District of Florida--the ethical lapses on his part were undeniable when he failed to recognize the obvious conflict and recuse himself from his involvement in a case involving the President at a time when he potentially was under consideration for a nomination.
These nominations are unqualified. They have revealed themselves to be incapable to meet basic standards of ethical conduct, judicial independence, and, if confirmed, they would extend the administration, in its reach into the courts, in effect, cosigning the President's most destructive and dangerous impulses, regardless of legality.
I urge my colleagues to join us in opposing these nominees. Mr. Bove should not be before this body, and I hope my colleagues will recognize the importance of standing strong and speaking out and voting against his nomination and the others that have been made.
Mr. President, I yield to the senior Senator from Illinois, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, our great colleague.
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, as we close this colloquy, I want to thank my colleagues who have come to the floor: Senators Durbin, Kim, Welch, Whitehouse, Hirono, Schiff, and now my great friend and colleague Senator Booker.
To my Republican friends, let me just say that there is ample evidence on the record already to say no to this nominee. But even if you disagree, what is undeniable here is the point that Senator Booker just made and that I made at the very beginning: This record is incomplete. The questions are unanswered.
Just today, I wrote to Attorney General Bondi about the report and investigation that was done by the Office of Professional Responsibility. We have had no access to it. It was done because of a conclusion by the court in a case before it between 2019 and 2021 in the Nejad case that criticized Mr. Bove for offering little in the way of supervision when material was denied to the defendant and the case had to be dismissed. The extent and scope of that investigation has never been disclosed. That is just one example of material that we have a right to see that raises questions that we should insist on being answered.
That letter almost certainly will never get a response--certainly not in time for our vote. But my Republican colleagues will be haunted by those questions. They will be compelled to answer those questions one day to their conscience because this nominee is different.
This nominee should be rejected.
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