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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, soon, the Senate will vote on President Trump's nomination of Emile Bove to a New Jersey seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

The swirl of information concerning the Department of Justice this year is almost impossible to follow. And as ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, we try to follow closely not only the nominees for judicial positions and positions of leadership at the Department of Justice but also those issues that are relevant to our jurisdiction.

Surprisingly, a case that has been around for years, the Jeffrey Epstein case, has captured the attention not only of Washington but of many people in this country. I have never seen anything like it. The House of Representatives went into a rollcall vote that lasted for 8 hours. Eight hours the rollcall was open. I am sure it set a new record. What hung them up so dramatically? The Jeffrey Epstein case and whether the files would be released.

As a result of that, the Speaker of the House decided that he would give a special recess to the House of Representatives and basically tell them: Leave Washington. We are not going to vote on the Epstein question.

What is it in these files that is so frightening to the President, the White House, the Department of Justice, and the Republican leadership in Congress? The American people have had their doubts for a long time that we knew all that we needed to know about this case, but now they have been confirmed by the actions of the Speaker of the House and the President of the United States.

I would just say flatout for the record: I know of no information that implicates the President in wrongdoing with Jeffrey Epstein, period. But I do believe, as many Republicans believe, the best thing to do for all of us is to disclose to the American people the truth of the situation. What actually happened with Mr. Epstein? Did he commit suicide? There are questions that are still unanswered.

And then, last week, something happened that was completely unheard of: One of the leaders in the Department of Justice asked for a private, personal meeting with a woman who was convicted for her activity with Jeffrey Epstein. Her name is Ghislaine Maxwell, and she is serving a 20-year term in prison, in Federal prison, for her wrongdoing. She was involved in the trafficking of children and young women for Mr. Epstein and his friends, and she lied about it. According to the prosecution, brazen lies. The penalty she faced: 20 years in prison. That is a hefty penalty. It indicates some serious wrongdoing.

The Trump administration sent a higher official to meet with her privately in the prison and to ask her questions. We don't know the nature of those inquiries, but it is certainly unusual for someone serving a 20-year sentence to have that kind of a visitor. We don't know what was said, but we should.

I joined with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat, of Rhode Island, in sending a letter to the Department of Justice. We want a copy of the transcript of that conversation between the Department of Justice officials and Ms. Maxwell, who is serving these 20 years in prison. We want to know what was said. I think we have a right to.

If there is some aspect of it that relates to redacting or, perhaps, relates to national security, I will be sensitive to that, as I am sure everyone would want me to be. But if it is a question of what kind of strategy was behind meeting with this woman--Jeffrey Epstein's girlfriend at one time--now serving a 20-year prison sentence, I think the American people have a right to know.

And, secondly, let me make it clear: For her wrongdoing, she is being penalized dramatically--and should be. Any notion that she is going to receive a pardon from Donald Trump, which seems to be a rather common thing in his administration, is totally unacceptable--totally. She was branded as a brazen liar when she was sentenced. Now that she has a chance to reduce the sentence or eliminate it by making statements, her credibility is zero. Any notion of a pardon or any notion of clemency by this President is totally inappropriate.

Let's go back to the nomination of Emil Bove to a New Jersey seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. An unusual thing occurred with this. He came and answered questions, as he should, for the White House as well as for the Judiciary Committee and then appeared before us under oath and answered questions.

But what was unusual about this situation is that the many questions he tried to answer, he didn't get close to coming to the truth. So egregious were his statements that individuals who worked with him were willing to risk their career in public service to come forward as whistleblowers to members of the committee in Congress to tell them that Mr. Bove had misrepresented the facts before us.

They risked their public careers to come and tell us this information, and as a result of it, some of them are going to have to leave the Department of Justice. But it seems that when given a test of values and ethics, time and again, Mr. Bove fails, and those around him step forward and risk their own careers to tell the truth.

So we said, as Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to the chairman: We believe these whistleblowers are credible. They are telling us things about Mr. Bove that contradict his testimony before the committee, and we believe that they should be heard. They are willing to come before the committee and take an oath to tell the truth and run the risk of retribution or penalty if they are found to have misled the committee in misrepresenting the facts.

You can't ask for more than that; someone willing to risk their job to tell the truth and then to appear before our committee under oath and testify as to what happened. I think that is credible, and I don't think it is avoidable.

We are talking about Bove being appointed to a Federal circuit bench that is a lifetime appointment. This is a critical decision, and we need to have the facts before the American people.

So what was the response of the Republicans on the committee, the chairman? They turned us down. They don't want to hear any whistleblowers. They don't want to hear people who are willing to stand before us under oath and tell us what actually happened with Mr. Bove and his misrepresentations to the committee.

As members of the conservative legal establishment have noted, Mr. Bove's nomination represents an alarming departure for the type of nominees we considered under the first Trump administration.

Like other individuals President Trump has installed at the highest positions of our government during his second term, Mr. Bove's primary qualification appears to be his blind loyalty to this President.

As Acting Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Bove personally ordered the terminations of dozens of career Federal prosecutors who worked to put violent January 6 offenders behind bars.

Remember what happened January 6? Vice President Pence was sitting in the President's chair. They were counting the ballots for the electoral college to determine who won the Presidential election, and we had to stop. Capitol Police came in, took the Vice President off the podium, and then notified us that there was a demonstration taking place in the Capitol Building that was dangerous.

I remember the first thing they said to us: Stay in your seats. This is going to be a safe room. You can stay here.

Ten minutes later, the same policeman came up and said: We were wrong. It isn't safe. Leave as quickly as possible.

We filed out that exit door, all the Members of the Senate. The Vice President was gone.

These demonstrators swarmed through the Capitol, attacked the Capitol Police, who were there trying to defend the building and the people in it, causing 140 of them to be injured and 5 of them lost their lives as a result of this.

Then they went on and started doing the job of ransacking this Chamber and the offices of the Senators in this building. They did great damage to this building--millions of dollars--and even worse, in my estimation, they desecrated what I consider to be a cathedral to democracy, the U.S. Capitol Building.

Many of them, of course, when they were aping for the cameras, were creating videotape evidence that was used against them. The Department of Justice went into an investigation of these demonstrators who had ransacked the Capitol and threatened the lives of people who were here.

As a result of it, more than 1,500 were prosecuted for that wrongdoing. It took a long period of time and a lot of investigation. U.S. attorneys were asked all over the United States to participate in this.

What happened? The 1,500--many of them ended up with criminal sentences, some very serious sentences, and some were incarcerated. Then came Donald Trump, and he gave a full, unconditional pardon to the January 6 rioters who came into this building--full and unconditional.

Then, to make it even worse, his new administration and the Department of Justice came in and said: If you were an assistant U.S. attorney following orders to prosecute these individuals and these rioters, you can be fired for doing that. We want you to disclose whether you participated in the investigation and prosecution of these individuals.

Who was behind all this? Well, quite a few members of the Trump administration. But as Acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, the man who is seeking this judgeship, personally ordered the termination of dozens of career Federal prosecutors who worked to put violent January 6 offenders behind bars.

Mr. Bove even made the outrageous claim that the prosecutions of January 6 rioters were ``a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people.''

Imagine that. He doubled down on this sentiment during his confirmation process and further insulted the law enforcement officers who kept us safe and risked their lives from these rioters.

In response to a question before our committee, Mr. Bove wrote that the ``heavy-handed tactics'' by January 6 prosecutors were ``equally unacceptable'' as rioters' attacks on the police.

Think about that for a moment. He is saying the assistant U.S. attorneys--the prosecutors--who went after the individuals who stormed through the Capitol were just as bad as the rioters themselves.

I pointed this out to my Republican colleagues; that a man seeking a lifetime appointment to the Federal bench believes that those who prosecute cop-beaters are as bad as the cop-beaters themselves.

Expecting my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to react as I have this morning, what did I get? Crickets. Silence. No response.

He said the prosecutors were as bad as the rioters themselves.

Mr. Bove has been up to far more as a senior Justice Department official than just excusing the conduct of January 6 offenders. He personally led the administration's attempt to strike a corrupt bargain with New York City Mayor Eric Adams by offering to drop his pending prosecution in exchange for Mayor Adams' cooperation on President Trump's immigration policies.

Get that straight--investigations of corruption on the mayor of New York City, the response from the Trump administration, from Mr. Emil Bove, was: We will cut a deal with you. We won't prosecute you if you promise to play ball with us when it comes to mass deportations.

In response to Mr. Bove's alleged quid pro quo, several Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, including the U.S. attorney herself--a staunch conservative who clerked for Justice Scalia and was appointed to the position by President Trump--made it clear that they would not participate in Emil Bove's deal with the mayor of New York.

Mr. Bove's disdain for the rule of law has been a theme throughout his entire career. As a Federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, he once admitted that prosecutors he supervised told the defense team a ``flat lie'' regarding their disclosure obligations--a flatout lie.

Given that background, it appears Mr. Bove's time in the Trump administration has been true to form.

Last month, Erez Reuveni, a career DOJ attorney who defended the first Trump administration's administrative policies in court, filed a whistleblower complaint with my office. According to Mr. Reuveni, Mr. Bove told other Department attorneys they might need to say ``f you'' to Federal courts that issue orders which the Trump administration disagreed with.

Remarkably, when he was under oath before the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Bove would not deny that he delivered such a message. He merely said he did not recall whether he had used the explicit language.

So I asked Mr. Reuveni, the whistleblower, to substantiate his claims, and he did. Mr. Reuveni provided text messages, emails, and a trove of other documents corroborating his claim that Mr. Bove had both suggested the possibility of violating court orders and had spearheaded efforts to mislead judges.

Mr. Reuveni is willing to testify under oath about what I have just said.

I asked the Judiciary Committee, in a formal letter, to take his testimony, but apparently my Republican colleagues have no interest in learning the truth about Mr. Bove.

Mr. Reuveni is apparently not alone. According to public reporting, another whistleblower filed a complaint with the Justice Department's inspector general that further backs up these allegations.

My office is working to obtain a copy of that complaint filed with the inspector general. The contents of that complaint are one of many unanswered questions regarding Bove's conduct.

It appears my Republican colleagues fear the answers. That is the only reason I can see for their insistence on forcing this nomination through at breakneck speed before all the facts are public.

In addition to the outstanding inspector general complaint, we have absolutely no idea how involved Mr. Bove has been in the Trump administration's Jeffrey Epstein coverup.

As I noted previously, it was very convenient for Senate Republicans that Attorney General Bondi did not announce her plan to keep the Epstein files hidden until shortly after Mr. Bove's obligation to answer questions before the committee.

Interesting timing.

Mr. Bove has served at the most senior levels of the Justice Department in these early months of the administration. It is highly unlikely that he does not have knowledge of the Epstein coverup.

So my colleagues and I sent him followup questions to assess his involvement. No surprise, refused to answer.

Some conservative voices have been willing to speak truth to power regarding Mr. Bove's nomination. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, a known liberal newspaper, pointed out that Mr. Bove's record ``creates an impression of . . . a lawyer comfortabl[y] pursuing policy outcomes by pushing legal boundaries.''

Conservative legal commentator Ed Whelan wrote that he has ``serious doubts that Bove has the character and integrity to be worthy of confirmation as a federal judge.''

You don't have to take it from them or me. President Trump, himself, has made the claim that Mr. Bove was selected for his position not because of his legal accomplishments or his dedication to a conservative method of constitutional interpretation. As the President put it, Mr. Bove will ``do anything . . . that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.''

I strongly urge my colleagues to consider the implications of giving this man, Emil Bove, a lifetime seat on the Federal bench. Join me in opposing his nomination.

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