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Floor Speech

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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, we have an administration that is flouting the law at every turn. Since being sworn into office, Donald Trump has signed dozens of Executive orders attempting to do everything from ending birthright citizenship and eliminating the Department of Education to invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport individuals without due process.

In the months since, lawyers defending these lawless actions in court have been rebuffed time and again by judges across the country, including judges nominated by Donald Trump himself. Note that. Even Donald Trump's nominated judges have said you can't keep making these kind of arguments before me.

So, now, Trump has gone even further by nominating to a lifetime judgeship a man who makes no secret of his disregard for our courts and the rule of law. And that man is Emil Bove.

Based on his nomination hearing and a review of his background and the record before us, Mr. Bove is unfit to be a Federal judge because of his disregard for the rule of law and his temperament. There are so many red flags regarding this nominee, as articulated by my colleagues before me.

Mr. Bove has no respect for the rule of law or the courts that uphold it. This was made all too clear by a whistleblower, a man who had the courage to point out certain things about this nominee. This courageous whistleblower is Erez Reuveni.

Mr. Reuveni was a career attorney at the DOJ before he was fired by the Trump administration for not lying to the court that the administration made a mistake in deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. Note this. He was fired because he told the truth to the courts. He was expected to lie to the court and say: Oh, the Trump administration did not make a mistake in Mr. Garcia's case.

The facts prove otherwise.

Far from being a rogue partisan, Mr. Reuveni spent 15 years at the Department of Justice, including during the first Trump administration, where he received awards for his work defending the administration's policies in court. Mr. Reuveni shared with the Judiciary Committee that Mr. Bove, the nominee before us, casually discussed ignoring court orders at a meeting attended by not just Mr. Reuveni but by a bunch of other AGs in the Department of Justice.

So while Mr. Bove and my Republican colleagues would like us to focus on whether Mr. Bove actually directed the government to ignore a court order at this fateful meeting, that focus misses the point. According to Mr. Reuveni, Mr. Bove said the Justice Department would need to consider telling the courts ``f you'' if the court ordered the administration--the Justice Department--to stop what they were doing. Neither Mr. Bove nor anyone else has denied the sequence of events.

Mr. Reuveni produced 100 pages of documents and text messages supporting his statement that under Bove, DOJ lawyers were directed to prioritize the President's political agenda over their legal and ethical obligations.

My Democratic colleagues and I tried to ask Mr. Bove about these revelations, but, unsurprisingly, he refused to answer nearly all of the questions on these points. As noted, he even cited privileges that don't even apply to him. So we didn't get much in the way of responses from Mr. Bove. As for the committee, rather than hold a hearing to hear from this whistleblower under oath, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee chose to rush through Mr. Bove's nomination, breaking precedent by refusing to allow Democrats to even speak on his nomination in committee.

I am sure people saw that the Democrats on that committee walked out in protest.

Beyond his disregard for the rule of law, Mr. Bove also lacks the temperament to be a Federal judge. We expect our Federal judges to be fair, to be objective. We don't expect them to have political axes to grind. But that is not what we are going to get with Mr. Bove.

One issue that is particularly important to me is harassment and abuse of law clerks and court staff by Federal judges. Those with nearly absolute power, like a Federal judge in their Chambers, can do great harm to those who work for them. That is why I introduced a bipartisan, bicameral bill aimed at addressing workplace harassment in the Federal Judiciary. We know this happens.

So this issue arises with regard to Mr. Bove because of reports that he was an abusive supervisor at the Southern District of New York. In other words, he is a supervisor who abuses his power. When questioned, Mr. Bove confirmed that a group of office leaders recommended to the U.S. attorney that he be removed as a supervisor of the unit that he was leading. According to reports, this came after an investigation and Mr. Bove only kept his job after he pleaded to keep it.

It is, frankly, astounding that these very busy prosecutors in the office that he was in considered Mr. Bove's behavior so concerning that they went so far as to investigate his behavior and recommend his removal. To clarify things, I asked Mr. Bove, in questions for the record, to send us copies of his personnel file. He refused.

Far from an independent, fairminded jurist, Mr. Bove is willing to use whatever means he deems necessary to meet the ends sought by Donald Trump. There is absolutely no question that the reason Mr. Bove came to President Trump's attention was his complete loyalty to President Trump, which he manifests clearly. This is a concern. Don't take my word for it.

I want to show you, Mr. President, this is a letter signed by nearly 1,000--1,000--former DOJ lawyers urging this body to reject Mr. Bove's nomination. They wrote:

We, the undersigned, proudly defended the rule of law as attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice. We are all alarmed by DOJ leadership's recent deviations from constitutional principles and institutional guardrails.

These almost 1,000 wrote--the letter continues:

Emil Bove has been a leader in this assault. Despite that, he now stands before you as a nominee for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. . . . It is intolerable to us that anyone who disgraces the Justice Department will 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 went on to remind us that each of us in this body was elected by a democratic process anchored by the rule of law and urged us to protect the rule of law by voting our conscience and rejecting Mr. Bove's nomination.

Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Durbin, and Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

We, the undersigned, proudly defended the rule of law as attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). We are all alarmed by DOJ leadership's recent deviations from constitutional principles and institutional guardrails. We also share a grave concern over the senseless attacks on the dedicated career employees who are the backbone of the Department.

Emil Bove has been a leader in this assault. Despite that, he now stands before you as a nominee for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. 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. 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.

Few actions could undermine the rule of law more than a senior executive branch official flouting another branch's authority. But that is exactly what Mr. Bove allegedly did through his involvement in DOJ's defiance of court orders, as described by former senior DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni in his whistleblower disclosure--the details of which are supported by contemporaneous communications between Department attorneys. Such behavior, if susbstantiated, should not be countenanced.

As a 15-year attorney at the Department who was promoted under this Administration, Mr. Reuveni litigated some of the most divisive cases the Department has ever defended, many under President Trump. But he knew, as all attorneys should know, that the ethical requirement to zealously represent one's client is not absolute; the duty of candor to the court must always come first. Mr. Reuveni refused to violate that duty--a choice that cost him his job.

The risks Mr. Reuveni took by later blowing the whistle should inspire everyone committed to preserving the rule of law. We all applaud his bravery, and we stand ready to support any DOJ employee who uses the proper channels to hold our government accountable.

Even putting aside the information that's surfaced about internal deliberations involving Mr. Bove, his denial that he sought to defy court orders strains credulity. Questioned repeatedly over whether he told DOJ attorneys to consider saying ``fuck you'' to courts, he mustered only an ``I don't recall.'' Each one of the undersigned would testify, under oath, that we have never--and would never--tell a Justice Department attorney to consider defying a court order. Moreover, the Justice Department's later defiance of judicial mandates in the cases where Mr. Bove previewed doing so further suggests that disregarding court orders was Mr. Bove's intent all along.

Mr. Reuveni is far from the only DOJ attorney who has faced unconscionable ethical challenges of Mr. Bove's design. When Mr. Bove directed prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and DOJ's Public Integrity Section to dismiss the case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, his actions gave the appearance of impermissible political considerations stemming from President Trump's immigration agenda. Former SDNY prosecutor Hagan Scotten encapsulated the problem in his resignation letter: ``No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.

Mr. Bove's trampling over institutional norms in this case, and in others, sent shockwaves through the ranks--cratering morale, triggering mass departures, and eroding the effectiveness of DOJ's vital work. Prosecutorial authority carries profound consequences on individuals' lives and the integrity of our public institutions; wielding it without impartiality is a flagrant abuse of that power. Because impartiality is also a cornerstone of the judiciary, any failure to exercise it at DOJ must be carefully considered.

Mr. Bove's apparent lack of impartiality was also on full display when he punished those who pursued justice after the January 6 assault on the Capitol. Following President Trump's repeated promises of retribution, Mr. Bove directed the termination of over a dozen of those prosecutors. He also called for the firings of eight senior FBI officials who were involved in January 6-related investigations and sought the names of thousands more FBI agents for possible ``additional personnel actions.'' Purging dedicated public servants for following the law was a betrayal of DOJ's law-enforcement principles and an affront to democratic values. Because Mr. Bove oversaw the investigation of January 6 suspects himself as an Assistant United States Attorney, it was also a breathtaking act of hypocrisy.

Each of you was elected through a democratic process that, for nearly 250 years, has been anchored by the rule of law. But the law is only as strong as the institutions that interpret and enforce it; foremost among them, the federal judiciary and the Department of Justice. By elevating those who've degraded one of those institutions to lifetime seats on the other, you will have abrogated your duty to ensure that we remain a nation of laws.

We ask that you vote your conscience only after thoroughly and honestly investigating Mr. Bove's actions at the Justice Department, including by questioning current and former DOJ employees with information relevant to the aforementioned incidents and others. We also urge you to zealously exercise your oversight powers to protect the Justice Department against further attacks.

Thank you for your shared respect for our justice system-- and your consideration of our deep concern for its future.

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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, for all the reasons provided by me and my colleagues before me on the Democratic side, I urge my colleagues to join me in defending the rule of law by not putting into a lifetime appointment somebody who thinks that he can ignore court orders and certainly not by saying ``f you'' to the courts; that that person not be confirmed by this body. We need to do our jobs by rejecting this nominee.

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