After Judiciary scrap, Senate Republicans forge ahead with Emil Bove nomination

WASHINGTON (CN) — Senate Republicans sidestepped a Democratic roadblock on Tuesday and approved a procedural measure pushing Emil Bove’s nomination to a key appellate court vacancy towards final confirmation.

The effort to finalize Bove’s appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit comes less than a week after Democrats walked out of a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting after Republicans blocked debate on the nominee — a move which some lawmakers and judicial experts said obviously ran afoul of committee rules.

Tuesday’s vote, though, was far from the last hurdle for Bove, a former Justice Department official and personal lawyer for President Donald Trump tapped earlier this year to join the appellate bench. Senators voted 50-48 on a motion to proceed with his nomination, a measure that is traditionally adopted by voice vote, but which was forced into a roll call by Democrats hoping to slow down the process.

Democrats have vowed to fight Bove’s nomination, accusing him of being little more than a henchman for the president. They’ve argued that confirming him to a lifetime role on the federal bench would hand the Trump administration a loyal ally in the courts.

And Democratic lawmakers have pointed to the contents of a whistleblower report from a former Justice Department attorney, who said that Bove had expressed intent to violate a federal court order while serving as acting deputy attorney general earlier this year.

During a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Bove would be “one of the worst judges we’ve ever had” and accused Republicans of “jamming” him through committee.

“He’s the extreme of the extreme,” Schumer said. “It’s clear that Bove holds, deep down, a hostility for the very bench he’s being considered for.”

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker accused his Republican colleagues of being under the “thrall” of the president, forging ahead with Bove’s nomination despite the Senate’s traditional role of advice and consent.

“They are turning us into a submissive branch that … carries out whatever their dear leader says,” Booker told reporters.

The New Jersey Democrat played a central role in last week’s Judiciary Committee blow-up, where he filibustered Republicans as they attempted to advance Bove’s nomination to the full Senate without allowing Democrats an opportunity to debate. The panel’s GOP lawmakers cast their ballots as Booker accused them of conducting a “sham” vote.

Following the Judiciary Committee’s Thursday meeting, Democrats suggested that the vote to advance Bove was invalid because panel rules require a voting quorum of nine members, including two from the minority party. They also argued that Republicans had run afoul of committee guidelines for debating nominees.

Democrats said that they would take the issue up with the Senate parliamentarian, the official charged with interpreting the chamber’s rules. But Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin told Courthouse News on Tuesday that they had met with the parliamentarian and indicated that she had not overruled last week’s committee vote.

Republicans, for their part, countered Democrats’ complaints by saying that they were merely following an example set when their colleagues controlled the Senate majority.

In a statement last week, a spokesperson for Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley said that the Judiciary Committee chairman “abided by the precedent Democrats set” when he steamrolled debate on Bove’s nomination.

“Democrats who claim foul play ought to remember that they wrote this playbook themselves,” the spokesperson wrote.

Committee Republicans pointed to a November 2023 meeting in the Judiciary Committee, when then-chairman Durbin refused to allow Republicans time to debate a pair of President Joe Biden’s nominees for federal courts.

But the Illinois Democrat similarly thumped committee precedent then, arguing that previous panel chairs had violated the “letter and spirit” of committee debate rules. He added then that Grassley himself had done so during the nomination process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Moreover, Durbin pointed out that the Judiciary Committee had already debated and voted on the two nominees. Indeed, the judges in question — Mustafa Kasubhai and Eumi Lee — had cleared the committee earlier that month but were returned by the Senate parliamentarian on procedural grounds. Republicans spent so much time arguing against the nominees that the Judiciary Committee had to delay its initial vote.

Carl Tobias, chair of the University of Richmond School of Law, said in an interview Tuesday that he didn’t find the Republicans’ claim of a new committee precedent to be all too convincing.

“I think it’s apples and oranges,” Tobias said, noting that in the example Grassley’s office provided, Republican lawmakers had already had the chance to debate the nominees in question. “What they did last week — there was no discussion.”

And Tobias contended that the Republicans’ move last week to advance Bove’s nomination as Democrats walked out was a “clear violation” of Judiciary Committee rules despite the parliamentarian’s interpretation.

“It was pretty clear to me that all the Democrats, save Booker, had departed before the voting started,” he said. “I don’t see how you could argue that there were two minority members there … so I just consider the vote to be illegitimate and invalid.”

With Tuesday’s procedural vote passed, Bove’s nomination must clear one more hurdle — a cloture vote — before lawmakers can vote to confirm him to the Third Circuit. Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on the nominee Tuesday evening, teeing up a final vote this week before lawmakers leave Washington for a monthlong recess.

The Trump administration has pushed hard in recent weeks to get Bove confirmed to the Third Circuit. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who worked alongside the nominee on the president’s personal legal team, penned an op-ed last week for Fox News in which he referred to Bove as “Trump’s DOJ champion.”

“Emil is the most capable and principled lawyer I have ever known,” Blanche wrote. “His legal acumen is extraordinary, and his moral clarity is above reproach.”

Both the deputy attorney general and Attorney General Pam Bondi were present at Bove’s June confirmation hearing, leaving some Democrats and legal experts to question whether the Justice Department’s top officials had attended to pressure Senate Republicans into supporting his nomination.

The Justice Department has denied those charges, calling them “cynical and conspiratorial” and arguing that Bondi and Blanche attended Bove’s hearing to support a friend and colleague.

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