After his short tenure at the Justice Department, President Donald Trump's loyalist, Emil Bove now begins his first full year sitting on the federal appeals court bench. It begs the question of how far Bove will go in his loyalty to the boss.
Writing Tuesday, Politico's Erica Orden noted that, already, Bove has legal experts questioning his actions, which could be "unethical for a sitting judge."
Bove supported Trump's pardon of a drug trafficker and participated in a Trump rally, which is never done by top judicial leaders who are supposed to, at the very least, appear impartial.
In just one week, Bove supported Trump's pardon of a drug trafficker who happens to be an ex-president and attended a Trump rally. Legal ethicists are calling it inappropriate.
“I am proud to have previously represented and served President Trump, and I completely trust and respect his judgment in exercising the pardon power, which the Constitution vests in him alone by virtue of his mandate from the American people," Bove said.
“I think both acts create an appearance that he’s running for higher office – i.e, the Supreme Court,” legal ethics Professor Bruce Green at Fordham Law School told Politico. “Now, that doesn’t distinguish him from a lot of other conservative judges who’d like to be put on the Supreme Court, but it creates that impression.”
Bove's history with Trump extends through four indictments and a trial that ended in a big loss for the president, who was found guilty on 34 felony counts. Bove was rewarded with a top Justice Department post until controversial actions, including bribery allegations, were questioned and he was quickly nominated and confirmed for the judgeship.
“I think that commenting in his capacity as a former government lawyer is not improper, but it is embroiling himself in a political issue unnecessarily,” said Indiana University Law School Professor Charles Geyh, a scholar of judicial conduct and ethics.
“In my conversations with judges, there’s an enormous source of pride that you can be around the table with a bunch of federal judges, and you have no idea what the political inclinations of those judges are, because they really think of themselves as judges and not as as political actors, even though no one is disputing that they have political views [or] that in close cases — in politically charged cases — those views will influence their thinking,” Geyh added. “It’s just that they are not carrying water for the president that appointed them.”
Attending the Trump rally, Bove told MS NOW, he was “just here as a citizen coming to watch the president speak" at the highly political event.
Rules around these types of actions aren't exactly clear, said Professor Green.
“The rule isn’t crystal clear that it applies to him,” Green said. “I think attending a political rally is something that judges should not do because it compromises their appearance of impartiality. But I didn’t think it was specifically forbidden, and therefore it’s a bit of a judgment call for the [chief] judge.”
However, “absent a clear violation of the letter of the rule that a disciplinary authority would go after a life-tenured federal judge.”
Others claim that the event Bove attended wasn't political but an event where the president discussed the economy.