When dealing with a potentially career-threatening political scandal, there is a standard playbook: Issue a broad denial. Attack the accuser. Then declare the controversy over and tell everyone to move on.
That’s what Emil Bove — Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer-turned-senior Justice Department official — is going for as he tries to secure a lifetime appointment as a federal judge. The scandal? A scathing whistleblower disclosure by a former Justice Department lawyer that alleges disturbing and unethical conduct on the part of Bove and other senior DOJ lawyers, including multiple efforts to defy the courts in service of Trump’s agenda.
The disclosure, released one day before Bove’s Senate confirmation hearing last week, has further complicated a nomination that had already opened an uncomfortable fissure within the conservative legal movement and which faces an uncertain future in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Immediately after the allegations were unveiled, a defense took shape among the Trump administration and its Republican allies.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche described the whistleblower, Erez Reuveni, as a “disgruntled former employee” and accused him of planting “a false hit piece the day before a confirmation hearing.” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has long positioned himself as a champion of government whistleblowers, endorsed Blanche’s defense at Bove’s hearing and said that the “timing alone indicates that this was a...
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