Sure, “Department of Justice” has always been a misnomer, what with its blessing of things like civil asset forfeiture, bogus CFAA prosecutions, cop junk science, the 1033 program, and the complete inability to successfully sue federal officers for blatant Constitutional violations. But it also used to have things like a civil rights division that investigated misbehaving law enforcement agencies and actually pretended, for the most part, to agree with the long-accepted tenets of the rule of law.
That’s all gone now. Trump’s DOJ has eradicated the civil rights division, only mobilizing it when gun ownership or fundamentalism are “threatened.” It has also discarded any lip service to the rule of law and treats Trump like a king, Constitutional rights as privileges, and the system of checks and balances as a doormat.
Plenty of people in Trump’s cabinet have already made public statements claiming the courts are subservient to King Donald. And the DOJ — going to bat for the administration in an incredible number of lawsuits filed against it — continues to act as though the only rulings it needs to respect are those it agrees with.
The person heading up this blatant disregard for the processes and principles that actually made America great long before Trump arrived in office (either time) is someone Trump wants to give the title of “judge” to. That would be Emil Bove — a man who sits far ahead of Judge Dredd in the “least capable of respecting Constitutional rights” race.
Bove, a 44-year-old who looks like someone dug up Abe Vigoda’s corpse and forced it to self-embalm, is currently not earning his paycheck as the “principal associate attorney general,” which is the sort of extended title one tends to innately disbelieve when it’s sprawled across two columns on a LinkedIn page.
What that means in practice is that Bove can hand out legal guidance to DOJ lawyers. And, according to two(!!) DOJ whistleblowers, that legal guidance includes extending a middle finger to the very courts Trump wants to install Bove in.
Another whistleblower has made claims to the Justice Department’s watchdog that Emil Bove — a top agency official who is now nominated for a judgeship — suggested others in the department could ignore court orders during a contentious legal battle in an immigration case.
The whistleblower, a former DOJ attorney in the Office of Immigration Litigation, told CNN documents have been filed with the DOJ Office of the Inspector General that appear to align with another whistleblower’s account that Bove tried to mislead federal judges during the administration’s aggressive deportation effort this spring.
“I think it would be incredibly dangerous for someone like that to have a lifetime appointment as a federal appellate judge,” the whistleblower said.
Absolutely true! You definitely don’t want someone who thinks courts exist solely to ensure the current administration’s goals aren’t interrupted by civil rights complaints or accusations of actual illegality to ascend to a place where they can make this subservient fever dream a reality.
On the other hand, you’d think a guy who wants a judgeship to encourage respect for the position, because at some point, the power will shift and if Bove wants to keep going MAGA, he’ll need to ensure his rulings are respected, rather than greeted with extended middle fingers by DOJ lawyers employed by the current administration.
As the CNN report notes, these accusations were actually filed with the DOJ Inspector General before former DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni made his allegations public. And those allegations certainly grabbed a fair number of headlines because it’s not every day a high-level DOJ official tells underlings it’s time to say “fuck you” to courts demanding the grounding of deportation flights and the immediate return of migrants who were denied their due process rights.
Unfortunately, I imagine Emil Bove will live through this, despite looking like he spends all day sleeping on death’s doormat. Even if the Inspector General’s office hasn’t been completely overrun by Trump loyalists, there’s a near-100% chance that its report on these multiple allegations will be buried by the asshats running this nation into the ground, starting with the immensely underqualified attorney general Pam Bondi, and ending with everyone who’s still competent enough to carry out the will of a man generally too incoherent to competently explain what he wants or why he wants it.