On May 25, Trump nominated Emil Bove to a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Circuit courts are the highest level of the federal judiciary short of the Supreme Court. Bove is expected to be confirmed by the Senate soon. There is widespread talk that Trump sees this as a potential stepping stone to appointing Bove to the Supreme Court in the future.

Bove rose to notoriety based on two things: his role in “enforcing discipline” when there was a revolt in the Department of Justice (DOJ) against a deal that Bove had made with New York City Mayor Eric Adams that would allow Adams to escape prosecution; and his role in forcing attorneys under his command to lie to judges about whether they had knowingly ignored court orders when sending immigrants to a brutal concentration camp in El Salvador. 

Bove has no experience as a judge at any level. But he is a proven MAGA enforcer and Trump loyalist. As Trump put it when he made the nomination, Bove will do “anything… that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” In other words, his loyalty is explicitly to Trump and the MAGA fascist movement he leads, not to the rule of law or the U.S. Constitution.

Should Bove be approved for the Third Circuit, this will mark a further huge step in turning the courts into instruments of fascism.

Emil Bove: A Ruthless Enforcer for MAGA Fascism

For several years, Bove was one of Trump’s top personal attorneys (part of a firm started by Todd Blanche, currently Deputy Attorney General). When Trump took office in January, Bove was made Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General under Blanche, overseeing all DOJ operations.

From this position, Bove has enforced the transformation of DOJ into an instrument of fascist power entirely severed from the rule of law. 

• In January, Bove led a purge of dozens of prosecutors who had worked on the cases of people charged in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, claiming that they could not be trusted to carry out Trump’s agenda. As if that—rather than impartial enforcement of the law “without fear or favor”—was their job! (Trump had already pardoned almost all the nearly 1,600 people prosecuted for this violent attempted coup.)
  These prosecutors had been assigned to these cases by their supervisors. So the message was clear: If you don’t do what TRUMP wants, you are in big trouble… even if you are acting legally, ethically, and according to normal procedures. 
   
• As noted above, in February, Bove ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City’s fascist mayor, Eric Adams, in return for Adams collaborating with ICE immigration raids in New York. In doing so, Bove violated both New York City and State “sanctuary laws” that place legal limits on that cooperation.
  Meanwhile, acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon refused to sign this blatantly illegal motion to dismiss charges and resigned from her job. So did several other prosecutors who couldn’t stomach this perversion of “justice.” Bove then assembled the whole Public Integrity Section at DOJ and threatened them all with firing if one of them didn’t sign the order. (Eventually, one did.)
   
• In March (also as noted above), according to a whistleblower—former Acting Deputy Director for the Office of Immigration Litigation at DOJ, Erez Reuveni—Bove told DOJ attorneys that Trump was about to invoke the Alien Enemies Act¹ to deport Venezuelans who were alleged to be “gang members,” to a prison in El Salvador. Bove emphasized that this was “of the highest importance to the White House,” that the planes “have to take off, quote, no matter what,” and that “if some court were to issue some order that prevents that from happening, we would have to consider telling that court, quote, fuck you.” (Bove claims he didn’t say this, but there is email evidence that he did.) It is hard to exaggerate the significance of a top official openly telling his subordinates to violate their oaths of office and to do it in such a blatant fashion. 
  Reuveni also reports that U.S. attorneys were directed to lie outright to the judge hearing the case, claiming they didn’t know if flights had taken off when they actually did know.
  When the judge ordered U.S. attorneys to turn the planes around, or if they had already landed, to bring back the men who had been illegally deported, Reuveni says that they were told that Bove wanted them to ignore that order.
  During this same period, Reuveni was working on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—one of the men deported to El Salvador. Garcia had fled from El Salvador to the U.S. in 2011, and had gotten a court order that was still in effect that he could not be deported to El Salvador because of the danger of persecution there. Reuveni filed a brief with the court acknowledging that Garcia had been deported “by mistake”—that is, in violation of an existing court order. This provoked an angry response from DOJ officials.
  Bove and other DOJ officials demanded that Reuveni file a brief arguing that Garcia was a leader of El Salvador’s M-13 gang, and a dangerous “terrorist”—which Bove and Reuveni both knew was untrue. After several tense meetings, according to Reuveni, “I get an email that I’ve been put on administrative leave for failure to follow an order, failure to advocate on behalf of my clients. And once that letter was sent to me, it was pretty clear that second letter actually firing me was coming.”  [Reuveni’s account of all this can be heard on the July 23 podcast of The Daily.]
   

Fascist Rule vs. Rule of Law

How much does Bove stand out as a flashing red light of onrushing fascist lockdown? More than 900 former DOJ attorneys, including many Trump appointees, signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee stating that Bove’s appointment would be “intolerable” and that it should “alarm all Americans concerned about the Department’s future and the survival of the rule of law.” 

How badly do the MAGA fascists want Bove to be appointed? During his Senate confirmation hearings, Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche—the two top people in the DOJ—were in the gallery. They fervently denied that they were there to make sure that no Republican Senators broke ranks… but their denial itself—“oh, we’re just here to support a friend and colleague”—reeked of phony innocence and real menace. 

Whatever Bondi and Blanche were up to, the Republican Senators rammed through a vote to approve Bove without even allowing Democrats to raise objections.

The thread and the threat running through Bove’s time at the DOJ, and the determined push to position him high in the judiciary, drive home this crucial point: fascist consolidation is NOT just a series of very bad policies or laws—it is a different form of rule, one in which the fascist core led by Trump both stands above the law and twists the law to require the entire apparatus of government and even of “civil society” (universities, law firms, media, etc.) to bow to their authority and his agenda. 

And it further drives home this crucial point from Bob Avakian:

The longer this Trump regime remains in power, the greater the horrors it will perpetrate—all the more so if it is allowed to fully consolidate its fascist rule. This regime must be removed from power—NOW—before it is too late, through a process driven forward by the massive, non-violent but determined and sustained mobilization of millions of people, uniting all who can be united, who refuse to accept a fascist America—making it impossible for this regime to govern the country and remain in power. (from social media message @BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #118: "This system has brought forth Trump/MAGA fascism: People, in their millions, must put an end to this fascist regime—NOW—before it is too late!")