What Bove's Nomination Says About Trump's Future Judge Picks

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Sarah McCammon.

I cover politics.

I'm Carrie Johnson.

I cover the Justice Department.

And I'm Mara Lyason, Senior National Political Correspondent.

Today on the show, we're talking about President Trump's controversial nominee to join the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and what it could mean about the future of judicial appointees.

Carrie, you've been covering this story.

Let's just start there.

Who is Amel Bovey and why is he controversial?

You know, this is a guy who has really strong legal credentials.

He graduated from Georgetown Law School.

He clerked for a couple of really solid federal judges.

And then he was a prosecutor, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan for many years.

But most people might remember him because he helped defend Donald Trump in several criminal cases Trump was involved in over the last few few years.

Since January, he's been inside the Justice Department, basically the right-hand man to the Deputy Attorney General, and he's been involved in a lot of controversies in that job.

Yeah, what can you tell us about those controversies?

Critics think that Bovey has proven himself to be very loyal to Donald Trump inside the DOJ this year.

Remember, the DOJ has fired prosecutors who brought to justice many of the people who rioted and stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Bovey also was involved in dismissing the Eric Adams case, that corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams that caused so many career prosecutors to resign.

And more recently, he's been the subject of a whistleblower complaint over the department's approach to Trump's immigration agenda, the speedy deportations and arguments which Bovey has denied that he advised or basically suggested that lawyers inside the Justice Department would have have to blow off court orders about that stuff.

So loyal to the president, but not maybe to the rule of law.

That's the issue here.

And, you know, I talked to a woman named Stacey Young, who spent many, many years inside the Justice Department.

These days, she runs a group called Justice Connection, which helps connect DOJ lawyers with legal advice and ethics advice.

Here's what she had to say about this Bovey nomination: The Senate has a duty to thoroughly examine nominations to all judicial appointments.

And by voting to confirm Amel Bovey to a lifetime appointment, they would be doing more than just placing someone problematic on the bench.

They would be giving their stamp of approval on everything that's happened at DOJ in the last six months.

And that is simply unacceptable.

Important to note here that Amel Bovey at his confirmation hearing went out of his way to say that he's not anybody's enforcer.

He's not anybody's henchman.

He's just a small-town lawyer who was surprised to find himself, you know, in this job at this time.

And he's getting a lot of backing from the senior leaders at the Justice Department, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's former law partner.

Amara, what do you see here?

What do you think Trump wants for Bovey?

Well, that's a really good question.

I think, number one, he wants someone loyal to him.

That's been Trump's North Star in making any appointments.

I understand that.

What I want to hear from Kerry is what does Bovey as an appeals court judge mean over time, beyond Trump?

Trump doesn't really have some kind of grand ideology that he wants to cement over generations.

You know, he wants someone to protect him right now.

So what does it mean to have Bovey on the bench?

in perpetuity?

Well, for one thing, Amel Bovey is 44 years old, and this is a lifetime tenured appointment.

So if he's confirmed by the Senate,

he could sit on the bench for 20 or more years, which is a really significant thing.

He has not been a member of the conservative-leaning Federalist Society.

He doesn't appear to check those kinds of boxes that were so common among judges nominated by

other Republican presidents, but he has certainly demonstrated

his loyalty to Trump, both in and outside the Justice Department.

And he's simply somebody the White House is very comfortable with at this point.

Kerry, a moment ago you were talking about Stacey Young, that former DOJ lawyer you interviewed, who said that essentially if Bovey is confirmed, the Senate would be giving their stamp of approval to everything that's happened there in the last several months.

Is there any pushback from Republicans in the Senate?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I don't know if you remember this, but there was a vote in the Judiciary Committee recently, and all the Democrats walked out because they were so upset they wanted to say more things about Amel Bovey.

You know, one of the things that Democrats on the Judiciary Committee wanted to talk about was this report by a former DOJ lawyer who filed a whistleblower complaint.

And this lawyer basically says that Bovey and other people inside the Justice Department were suggesting that DOJ did not need to be fully honest with judges who were putting a temporary block on the administration's really speedy deportation agenda.

The whistleblower said he had text messages and emails and other things to back up his account, but Senator Charles Grassley, the chairman of the committee, a Republican, basically said he didn't believe the whistleblower had proven his case.

He thought Bova was going to be well positioned to be a judge.

And so what we saw there is that even senators who had been leery of confirming some of Trump's nominees, thinking here about Senator Tom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina.

Tillis voted for Amal Bovey, and now there are some procedural votes underway in the Senate.

Bovey's also jumping through those hoops.

So far, the only Republican I've seen who says she's going to vote against him is Senator Susan Collins of Maine.

And, you know, the math is such in the Senate that if all the other Republicans stick together, he can be confirmed on a simple majority vote.

But Mara, this is pretty much par for the course, isn't it, with Senate Republicans and Trump?

Oh, I'd be very surprised if anyone voted against him other than Susan Collins.

And actually, she happens to be up next year.

She is, I think, the only Republican up for re-election who comes from a state that Trump did not win.

But yeah, the Republicans are a lockstep party right now.

Whatever Donald Trump wants is what the Republican Party stands for.

And there is some hemming and hawing.

Sometimes they push back a little bit rhetorically, but they all do fall in line at the end.

So I'm not surprised about this.

this.

All right, we're going to take a quick break.

We'll have more in just a moment.

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And we're back.

Carrie, you reported that Bovey's nomination suggests a rift between Trump and an organization called the Federalist Society, which has been up until now very influential in helping Trump pick judges and in shaping the courts.

Just remind us, first of all, what is the Federalist Society?

The Federalist Society is a conservative group that's been around for more than a generation.

And it was basically started by a bunch of lawyers who thought that law schools were too liberal and they needed to develop a plan of action to change not just the environment inside law schools, but eventually to change the kinds of lawyers inside the government and in the federal judiciary.

It's been enormously successful, so successful that we now have a six to three conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court.

How did Trump come to work so closely with them, Mara?

Well, he came to work very closely with them because when he ran for president the first time, he wanted to show the conservative base and evangelical voters that he was going to fulfill one of their longest-held dreams and goals, which is to have a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

And he cooperated with the Federalist Society to draw up a list of judges that he would appoint.

And that's the way he showed those voters.

I'm serious about this.

These are the people that I'm going to pick from.

So the Federalist Society played an extremely important role in creating the supermajority on the court.

Now, Leonard Leo, who used to run the Federalist Society, was the person who really ran this operation of creating the list, communicating to conservative voters that if they voted for Trump, even though he had taken liberal positions in the past, that they would get the kind of conservative judges they want.

Now, since then, Trump has soured on Leonard Leo.

Leonard Leo no longer works at the Federalist Society.

And I want to ask Harry, why?

Why is he so mad at Leonard Leo?

Yeah, that's an interesting question.

And I think one of the things was that Leo championed some people for top Justice Department roles inside the first Trump administration that really aggravated Donald Trump.

One of them was Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, who famously reached out to hire a special counsel named Robert Mueller, a name we haven't talked about in a while.

But Mueller, of course, spent a long time investigating Donald Trump and his campaign and their ties to Russia and Russian figures back in the day.

And Leo basically heard an earful about that from Trump.

And then the other thing, Mara, is that some of the judges that Leo and the Federalist Society basically recommended have now gone on to rule against President Trump in his second term in office.

There have been hundreds of lawsuits filed against Trump and the Trump administration this year over the efforts to remake the federal government and immigration and a whole bunch of other issues.

And so lower court judges have been ruling against the White House a lot, not just judges appointed by Democrats, but also those appointed by Republicans, including Trump himself.

And Trump was getting really irritated, so he lashed out at the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo on social media this year about that.

Aaron Powell, so Trump has gotten a lot of what he wanted from the Federalist Society and people associated with Leo.

I mean, look at the Supreme Court, the number of decisions and actions by President Trump that they've signed off on.

Of course, he hasn't gotten everything, and he's not happy about that.

But I'm thinking back to 2016 and the effort to rally the evangelical base.

I mean, I was in the room in a big meeting with evangelical leaders in New York that summer when Trump was stressing that he would pick from a list of judges that were sort of hand-picked.

He was going to release that list to leaders of this movement.

And this was a big part of his promise.

These leaders have helped to build Trump's movement and shape his policies, both in his first term and now.

What does this rift with the Federalist Society say about his relationship with the larger conservative movement?

Well, that's a really good question.

And it's a question we would put to you because you literally wrote the book on this.

And I will.

But I do think that the larger conservative movement, in terms of its voters, its foot soldiers, has been totally absorbed into the MAGA movement.

I don't think that there are ideological rifts.

Donald Trump famously said he would not sign a national abortion ban if it came to his desk while he was running for president in 2024.

That certainly isn't what evangelicals or conservative voters wanted to hear, the ones who really care about abortion.

But he did it and he didn't lose any votes.

And Donald Trump has a firmer grip on the base of his party than any other modern president.

You know, he famously said, I can stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn't lose any voters.

So I think for the meantime, the larger conservative movement is just part of MAGA.

Over time in the future, I don't know.

And I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

And that's the same question I have about Bove.

For now, he's super loyal to Trump, but Trump won't be around forever.

And then is Bove just a standard conservative vote on the court or is he something else?

I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, if I see any pattern here, it's that Trump has been happy to work with and sort of use the energy and the ability to mobilize of these movements and groups.

He's been happy to rely on them, you know, whether it's the anti-abortion movement or the Heritage Foundation with Project 2025.

But he's also happy to sort of turn on them and criticize them if he feels it's politically necessary.

Like you mentioned, Mara, with the idea of a national abortion ban, obviously his efforts to at least verbally distance himself from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation, even though many of his policies mirror a lot of those ideas.

But I guess the question it raises for me, and I'm not sure if there's a clear answer, is sort of what's the well that he can dip into now?

If he no longer is fully aligned with some of those groups, like Federalist Society, where does he go for staff, for nominees going forward if he isn't satisfied with

the people that the movement's producing for him?

Aaron Powell, you know, that's a good question.

There are some lawyers inside the administration now who could appear on Trump's judge list.

In fact, we just had one from the White House Counsel's Office, Jen Mascott, be nominated to a federal judgeship, also on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

But that's a relatively small pool.

And a lot of the conservative lawyers with whom I've spoken this year about this basically think that the White House is going to have to turn back to the Federalist Society and Federalist Society members to fill some of these vacancies moving forward.

But he's not going to have the same kind of opportunity that he did in the first term, Donald Trump, to appoint 200 odd federal judges.

There just aren't that many vacancies right now.

And what's more, there's some anecdotal evidence that judges are taking retirement less often now, in part because they don't want Trump to pick their replacements.

Trevor Burrus, they're trying to wait it out.

That's right.

So before we go, Trump just has three years left in office.

As we mentioned, this is a lifetime appointment.

What impact could Bovey have after Trump is out of office if he's confirmed?

Yeah, if he's confirmed, he'll sit on panels, typically three judge panels on the appeals court.

So one vote there will not make

a huge difference.

But

it's worth noting that eventually President Trump may get a nominee on the Supreme Court.

Court.

Another nominee.

Another nominee on the Supreme Court.

And if that's the case and loyalty to Trump is one of the deciding factors, I'm already hearing people talk about Amel Bovey being a possible candidate for that job.

And if that were to happen, that would be enormously consequential.

All right, we'll leave it there.

I'm Sarah McCammon.

I cover politics.

I'm Carrie Johnson.

I cover the Justice Department.

And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

And thank thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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