Current Third Circuit Appeals Court judge and former Trump lawyer Emil Bove made it clear — on more than one occasion — that DOJ lawyers should tell the courts “fuck you” if they tried to shut down any anti-migrant operations.
That message apparently reached several receptive ears. Earlier this year, a federal judge ordered the administration to halt flights to El Salvador and to return immigrants who hadn’t been given access to their due process rights. The government went on to pretend this had never happened. It did at least not continue to send planes to El Salvador, but it refused to order those already in the air to turn around and return to the United States.
Thanks to a filing by the DOJ, we now know who made the final call to say “fuck you” to Judge James Boasberg, who issued both a verbal and written order demanding the flights to El Salvador be halted.
This is the angle the administration is taking to pretend it didn’t need to recall flights it had hastily sent aloft in anticipation of Boasberg’s ruling:
At approximately 6:45 PM on March 15, 2025, the Court orally directed counsel for the Government to inform his clients of the Court’s oral directives at the hearing, including statements directing that any removed class members “need to be returned to the United States.” By that point, two flights carrying individuals designated under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) had already departed from the United States and were outside United States territory and airspace.
At approximately 7:25 PM, the Court memorialized its temporary restraining order in a written order, as the Court had indicated at the hearing it would do. The written order enjoined Defendants “from removing” class members pursuant to the AEA. The written order, unlike the oral directives, said nothing about returning class members who had already been removed.
A government acting in good faith might have taken steps to return the planes already in the air as a precautionary step to avoid generating contempt of court allegations. This government never acts in good faith. It allowed the planes to continue heading towards El Salvador even though it had received a verbal order “directing that any removed [migrants] need[ed] to be returned to the United States.”
It instead let the planes continued to fly until it had received a written order, which it then decided to interpret as permission to allow these flights to continue.
But someone had to make the final call to blow off Judge Boasberg’s first order and pretend the second order wasn’t meant to be read in the spirit of his first order. And that person would be Kristi Noem, who is now defending her actions with the usual Trump admin horseshit about keeping America safe from dangerous brown people:
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday confirmed that she instructed the federal government to carry out the deportation and transferring Venezuelan detainees to El Salvador despite a court order halting the flights.
“The decisions that are made on deportations, where flights go, and when they go are my decision at the Department of Homeland Security,” Noem told NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.” “And we will continue to do the right thing and ensure that dangerous criminals are removed.”
Bullshit. That was never the case. The Trump administration doesn’t care whether or not the migrants it’s ejecting as as fast as it can are actually “dangerous criminals.” The latest data shows only 5% of those detained by ICE have criminal records that contain violent crimes. 73% of those detained have no criminal record at all.
Rather than err on the side of caution when confronted with a discrepancy between what was said and what was written by the judge, Kristi Noem signed off on the interpretation that allowed the administration to do what it was always going to do anyway. And in doing so, she’s made it clear this government will engage in actionable contempt that springs from its literal contempt for the system of checks and balances.
Boasberg previously found probable cause to start contempt proceedings over the administration’s deportations, an action that was paused for months until an appeals court last week cleared the way for him to charge forward.
This is something, at least. Its usefulness in forcing the administration to play by the rules has yet to be seen. So far, nothing really has had any deterrent effect on an administration that continues to expand the boundaries of executive power on a daily basis.
This isn’t as surprising as it should be. After all, we’re talking about Emil Bove, who was elevated from being Trump’s personal lawyer to a spot in the Third Circuit Appeals Court for his loyalty to the MAGA Cause.
Emil Bove did at least spend some time as a government prosecutor, which is more than can be said about several other people Trump has turned into administration officials. But he’s also the guy whose first few months as the deputy attorney general doing things like dropping the DOJ’s corruption case against former NYC mayor Eric Adams once Adams made it clear he’d do whatever Trump asked of him.
He’s also the one who told DOJ prosecutors (most of whom have either quit or been fired for refusing to be part of the problem) to say “fuck you” to federal courts if they tried to get in the way of Trump’s mass deportation program.
So, to hear he might have been the first to pitch the extrajudicial killing of brown people doesn’t exactly provoke gasps of disbelief. It probably provokes more “well, of course he did” reactions from anyone who’s been paying attention to Bove’s actions and statements since his return to the [chokes a bit on the phrase] public service.
At a Justice Department conference in February, then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told the department’s top drug prosecutors that the Trump administration wasn’t interested in interdicting suspected drug vessels at sea anymore. Instead, he said, the U.S. should “just sink the boats,” according to three people present for the speech.
That’s from NPR’s reporting on Bove’s comments, which were apparently delivered months before the administration finally got around to “just sinking boats.” Not that Bove’s comments contained any sort of legal guidance or justification for these extrajudicial strikes — the first ever carried out by any presidential administration.
That would arrive much, much later. In fact, it wouldn’t arrive until after the first strikes had already taken place, and they’ve been revised at least once in hopes of dodging judicial review of these actions.
Reuters could not determine whether Bove, who left the department in early September to begin serving as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, was directly involved in discussions with the Pentagon about the plans to strike suspected drug vessels.
Bove declined to comment through a court spokesperson. A Justice Department spokesperson downplayed the recollections of the witnesses, calling them “disgruntled,” but did not dispute their account.
None of this adds up anything approaching the level of decorum — much less legal acumen — we hope would be the minimum expected of judges seated anywhere, but especially in a position where the only people capable of rejecting Bove’s legal opinions seem to be similarly compromised. These strikes are something even the nation’s foremost torture apologist — former DOJ Office of Legal Counsel deputy attorney general John Yoo — has publicly stated are both illegal and unconstitutional.
But this is the guy who sits in the Third Circuit Appeals Court, at least for now. Maybe his brief history of encouraging illegal and unconstitutional actions will catch up to him, as Jay Willis of Balls and Strikes hopefully suggests:
For my money, the most remarkable detail of this story is how unserious a person it shows Bove to be. Based on the timeline, his “just sink the boats” comments were not based on a carefully researched, thoroughly vetted opinion about the legality of using military airstrikes to murder civilians in international waters. Bove was just another sweaty, ladder-climbing try-hard who wormed his way into Trump’s inner circle, jumped at the chance to live out a vigilante justice fantasy, and trusted that actual lawyers would take care of the details for him.
Bove’s alleged involvement in the airstrikes gives Democrats even more fodder for impeaching and removing him from office next time they control the House and Senate.
That’s a few too many “if’s” for my liking, but it does at least point out there’s a way to remove at least a few of Trump’s appointees, possibly even before Trump himself has exited the Oval Office.
But the bigger point is in the paragraph preceding the path to a forced exit: Bove is emblematic of the people in positions of power in the Trump administration. These are people who don’t care whether or not anything is constitutional or even legally-defensible under the most expansive definitions of executive power. They just do what they want to do and it’s up to the rest of the nation to stop them. And that plan that can’t really even be called a “plan” is working. Installing a murder proponent like Bove in an appellate court is just more grease on the wheels.
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.
Quite obviously, the Trump Administration was never going to respect the law when it came to its mass deportation plans. That much became immediately clear as ICE engaged in raid after raid of neighborhoods and businesses, searching for literally any migrant, rather than just those suspected of or convicted for violent crimes.
As soon as the planes loaded with detainees began landing in countries most of those on board weren’t from, the efficient cruelty of Trump’s anti-migrant actions was exposed. Multiple legal challenges were filed, most of them seeking little more than forcing the government to respect due process rights. As the phrase says, they’re rights, not privileges that can be unilaterally revoked just because the current administration has a hate-on for non-whites.
The administration that has always pretended to be ultra-concerned about “law and order” went rogue. Planes were put in the air after courts ordered them to remain on the ground. People exiled to foreign prisons remained caged while the Trump DOJ dodged court orders and refused to honestly answer questions about why it continued to refuse to right some of its wrongs.
Not that we needed more evidence of this administration’s hatred for the laws that stand in the way of its cruelest urges, but here’s more anyway. Erez Ruveni, a former DOJ lawyer, has filed a whistleblower complaint about the DOJ’s actions since Trump’s return to office. Via the New York Times, here’s why Ruveni is no longer employed by the DOJ:
Mr. Reuveni was a career lawyer at the department for nearly 15 years until April, when he expressed concern in federal court that the administration had mistakenly deported a migrant to a megaprison in El Salvador. Mr. Reuveni was put on administrative leave a day later and ultimately fired.
That public embarrassment of the DOJ, via an open admission that an error was made, was enough to provoke Trump’s DOJ to fire one of its few remaining honest lawyers. Those still working for the DOJ have sold their soul for a handful of future paychecks. Either that or they never had a soul to sell, like senior DOJ official Emil Bove, whose anti-law and order statements are included in Ruveni’s whistleblower report.
Bove told attendees of the March 14 meeting that President Donald Trump would soon be invoking the Alien Enemies Act and that deportations would be carried out that weekend.
[…]
“Bove then made a remark concerning the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated. Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘f— you’ and ignore any such court order,” according to the letter.
Incredibly, Ruveni’s letter notes that he thought Bove’s heated comments would be blown off and things would return to their normal, lawful way — something that’s sort of expected at the Department of Justice. Instead, that was apparently the tipping point, not only in terms of his job, but for the DOJ as a whole.
Here’s how things went for Ruveni during the last few weeks of his DOJ career, as recounted in the complaint [PDF] released by his legal reps at the Government Accountability Project:
White House officials have publicly disparaged Mr. Reuveni to justify their refusal to comply with the Constitution and with court orders. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller falsely stated “The only mistake that was made is a lawyer put an incorrect line in a legal filing,” and labeled Mr. Reuveni a “saboteur, a Democrat.” Referring to Mr. Reuveni, President Trump stated, “Well, the lawyer that said it was a mistake was here a long time, was not appointed by us—should not have said that should not have said that.”
What has not been reported to date are Mr. Reuveni’s attempts over the course of three weeks and affecting three separate cases to secure the government’s compliance with court orders and his resistance to the internal efforts of DOJ and White House leadership to defy them through lack of candor, deliberate delay, and disinformation. Discouraging clients from engaging in illegal conduct is an important part of the role of a lawyer. Mr. Reuveni tried to do so and was thwarted, threatened, fired, and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court.
Of course, the DOJ and the administration have no real response to these accusations. Instead, the White House has chosen to ignore everything said in the letter and act like it works for Emil Bove, rather than the other way around:
“Emil Bove is an incredibly talented legal mind and a staunch defender of the U.S. Constitution who will make an excellent circuit court judge,” the statement by White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said.
Well, at best, only part of this statement is true. I can only speculate about the Bove’s “talented mind,” but it’s inherently clear he doesn’t give a fuck about the Constitution. That much can easily be seen by his support of Trump’s Alien Enemies Act abuses and the migrant flights he ensured wouldn’t be interrupted by issued court orders. He’s not serving the public. He’s nothing more than another opportunist who has sworn his fealty to a man who sincerely believes the Oval Office is a throne room.
Updated: make sure you read the update at the end of this story.
Here’s a fun thing about corruption investigations: Usually when prosecutors uncover one quid pro quo, they don’t resolve it by offering an even bigger quid pro quo. And yet, that appears to be exactly what’s happening with NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last fall for allegedly trading favors with Turkish officials, and is now watching those charges evaporate in exchange for helping the Trump administration with its immigration agenda.
The twist — and there’s always a twist — is that the people most effectively pointing out this corruption aren’t the usual suspects. Instead, it’s coming from a bunch of dyed-in-the-wool conservative prosecutors at SDNY who are resigning en masse rather than participate in what they see as a perversion of justice. When the Federalist Society crowd starts quitting over corruption, you know something interesting is happening.
The apparent corruption here isn’t just brazen — it’s documented in black and white. The Justice Department’s order to drop the case doesn’t even pretend to assess the merits of the charges. Instead, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove explicitly tied the dismissal to Adams’ willingness to assist with federal deportation efforts — a textbook example of weaponizing prosecutorial discretion for political ends.
Even more disturbing is the mechanism: the dismissal is “without prejudice,” meaning charges could be refiled at any time. This isn’t just prosecutorial discretion — it’s prosecutorial extortion. The Trump administration has effectively created a sword of Damocles to hang over Adams’ head, ensuring his continued compliance with their immigration agenda. The message is clear: step out of line, and those charges might suddenly become relevant again. It’s the kind of institutional corruption that would make a banana republic blush.
It means that Adams’ personal freedom now outweighs the best interests of the people of New York City.
The system’s response to this corruption has been revealing. For several days after the initial order, an unusual silence descended over the Southern District office — a silence that spoke volumes about the internal struggle taking place. Then came something remarkable: a scathing letter from Acting US Attorney Danielle Sassoon to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Sassoon — a Federalist Society stalwart and former Scalia clerk who’s about as far from a “progressive prosecutor” as you can get — laid bare the rot at the core of this decision in a document that reads like a conservative legal scholar’s manifesto against institutional corruption.
Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations. As Justice Robert Jackson explained, “the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.” The Federal Prosecutor, 24 J. Am. Jud. Soc’y 18 (“This authority has been granted by people who really wanted the right thing done—wanted crime eliminated— but also wanted the best in our American traditions preserved. “). I understand my duty as a prosecutor to mean enforcing the law impartially, and that includes prosecuting a validly returned indictment regardless whether its dismissal would be politically advantageous, to the defendant or to those who appointed me. A federal prosecutor “is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all.” Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935).
For the reasons explained above, I do not believe there are reasonable arguments in support of a Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss a case that is well supported by the evidence and the law. I understand that Mr. Bove disagrees, and I am mindful of your recent order reiterating prosecutors’ duty to make good-faith arguments in support of the Executive Branch’s positions. See Feb. 5, 2025 Mem. “General Policy Regarding Zealous Advocacy on Behalf of the United States.” But because I do not see any good-faith basis for the proposed position, I cannot make such arguments consistent with my duty of candor. N.Y.R.P.C.3.3; id. cmt. 2 (“A lawyer acting as an advocate in an adjudicative proceeding has an obligation to present the client’s case with persuasive force. Performance of that duty while maintaining confidences of the client, however, is qualified by the advocate’s duty of candor to the tribunal. ” ).
In particular, the rationale given by Mr. Bove—an exchange between a criminal defendant and the Department of Justice akin to the Bout exchange with Russia— is, as explained above, a bargain that a prosecutor should not make. Moreover, dismissing without prejudice and with the express option of again indicting Adams in the future creates obvious ethical problems, by implicitly threatening future prosecution if Adams’s cooperation with enforcing the immigration laws proves unsatisfactory to the Department. See In re Christoff, 690 N.E.2d 1135 (Ind. 1997) (disciplining prosecutor for threatening to renew a dormant criminal investigation against a potential candidate for public office in order to dissuade the candidate from running); Bruce A. Green & Rebecca Roiphe, Who Should Police Politicization of the DOJ?, 35 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y 671, 681 (2021) (noting that the Arizona Supreme Court disbarred the elected chief prosecutor of Maricopa County, Arizona, and his deputy, in part, for misusing their power to advance the chief prosecutor’s partisan political interests) . Finally, given the highly generalized accusations of weaponization, weighed against the strength of the evidence against Adams, a court will likely question whether that basis is pretextual. See, e.g. , United States v. Greater Blouse, Skirt & Neckwear Contractors, 228 F. Supp. 483, 487 (S.D.N.Y. 1964)(courts “ should be satisfied that the reasons advanced for the proposed dismissal are substantial and the real grounds upon which the application is based”)
I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal. Mr. Bove admonished me to be mindful of my obligation to zealously defend the interests of the United States and to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Administration. I hope you share my view that soliciting and considering the concerns of the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case serves rather than hinders that goal, and that we can find time to meet.
But wait, it gets better! There’s a footnote in Sassoon’s letter that tells you everything you need to know about how modern corruption works. The old-school way was to have your shady meetings in smoke-filled back rooms. The new way, apparently, is to have them in official conference rooms while actively preventing anyone from taking notes:
I attended a meeting on January 31, 2025, with Mr. Bove, Adams’s counsel, and members of my office. Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed. Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion
Nothing quite says you know you’re engaging in some shady ass shit like demanding you collect the notes of anyone in attendance.
What makes this story particularly significant is who’s blowing the whistle. Sassoon isn’t some “woke prosecutor” that the MAGA world can easily dismiss. She’s a card-carrying member of the conservative legal establishment who, until this week, was seen as a rising star in those circles. Her willingness to sacrifice her standing in that world to uphold basic constitutional principles reveals just how far the corruption has spread — and perhaps offers a glimmer of hope that some institutional guardrails still hold.
Sassoon’s stand has triggered a cascade of resignations within SDNY, with seven prosecutors (and counting) choosing to walk away rather than participate in this corruption of justice. The latest resignation letter, a scorching indictment from lead prosecutor Hagan Scotten, is particularly noteworthy. Scotten — who clerked for both Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh and explicitly states his support for the Trump administration — makes it clear that this isn’t about politics; it’s about fundamental principles of justice being trampled for political gain.
There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views. I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way.If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.
Scotten’s prediction proved grimly prophetic. As reported just hours ago, Bove and Bondi found their willing executioner — though the circumstances reveal yet another layer of institutional corruption:
The prosecutor acquiesced to file the motion in an attempt to spare other career staff from potentially being fired by Emil Bove, the acting US deputy attorney general and former personal lawyer to Trump, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. The news agency named the lawyer as Ed Sullivan, a veteran career prosecutor, who agreed to alleviate pressure on his colleagues in the department’s public integrity section of 30 attorneys, two sources said, after his team was given an hour by Bove to decide between them who would file the motion.
“This is not a capitulation – this is a coercion,” one of the people briefed on the meeting later told Reuters. “That person, in my mind, is a hero.” The whole section had reportedly discussed resigning en masse.
The cruel irony of forcing the Public Integrity Section to compromise its own integrity isn’t lost on anyone. This is how institutions die — not with a bang, but with an ultimatum.
There’s a special kind of institutional poetry here: The Public Integrity Section was given an hour to decide who would compromise their integrity. And someone did, not out of cowardice or foolishness, but to protect their colleagues. “A hero,” his colleague called him, and maybe that’s right. But it’s the kind of heroism that only exists in broken systems.
The NY Times has revealed even more disturbing details about the behind-the-scenes machinations. In what reads like a playbook for corrupting justice, Bove apparently coached Adams’ legal team (including Alex Spiro, better known as Elon Musk’s go-to counsel) in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge fashion on exactly what political commitments would make the charges disappear.
During the meeting, Mr. Bove signaled that the decision about whether to dismiss the case had nothing to do with its legal merits.
Instead, Mr. Bove said he was interested in whether the case was hindering Mr. Adams’s leadership, particularly with regard to the city’s ability to cooperate with the federal government on Mr. Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Mr. Bove also said he was interested in whether the case, brought by the former U.S. attorney, Damian Williams, was a politically motivated prosecution meant to hurt Mr. Adams’s re-election prospects.
In her letter to Ms. Bondi, Ms. Sassoon said that she was “baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal.”
There’s something almost elegant about it, in a horrifying sort of way. The Justice Department has managed to transform a corruption prosecution into what amounts to a compliance manual for corruption. It’s like they’ve created a template: “Here’s how to trade criminal charges for political favors while maintaining plausible deniability.” And the really wild part? This is all happening after years of the MAGA world screaming about supposed “lawfare” against conservatives. Turns out they weren’t complaining about weaponized justice — they were planning how to do it themselves.
History rhymes: While mass resignations of principled lawyers helped topple Nixon’s presidency, in Trump’s second term they’ve become just another item in the daily digest of institutional erosion. The difference this time? It’s not the usual suspects sounding the alarm. Instead, it’s career conservatives — products of the Federalist Society pipeline — who are putting their careers on the line to preserve what’s left of prosecutorial independence.
As we’ve previously discussed, any path through this constitutional crisis requires principled conservatives to find their voice. The fact that it’s taking career prosecutors to do what elected Republicans won’t speaks volumes about where the real courage in conservative circles resides.
The question now isn’t just whether our institutions can survive this assault, but whether these acts of principled resistance can inspire others before the machinery of justice is fully converted into a tool of political control. The American experiment has survived previous challenges through the courage of individuals willing to place principle above party. We’re about to find out if enough of those individuals still exist.
Update: Incredibly, that report that a prosecutor had agreed to file the dismissal turned out to not be accurate. Many hours later, after no such filing was actually made a few very bizarre things happened. First, Emil Bove filed a notice of appearance in the case. That is… not normal.
Finally, the “nolle prosequi” (a notice saying “we no longer want to prosecute”) was filed. But even the way it was filed is weird and somewhat unprecedented. Two lawyers, including Ed Sullivan (who was mentioned above as effectively agreeing to be the fool to protect his coworkers) signed most of the document, but they did not sign the final statement. Instead, there was a further “order” from the DOJ, signed by Bove alone, telling the Court to effectively dismiss the case:
Even the language here is bizarre. The prosecutors don’t get to “direct” the Court to do anything. That’s likely why Bacon and Sullivan signed the part about “respectfully requests” that the Court issue an order. But Bove leaps in, acting like he gets to order around the judge, and separately signs that part.
Kinda shocking.
What will be interesting now, is to see what Judge Dale Ho does.
