[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 130 (Tuesday, July 29, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4798-S4800]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Nomination of Emil J. Bove III

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, soon the Senate will proceed to a final 
vote on the nomination of Emil Bove; that is to be judge on the Third 
Circuit.
  As I said in my statement in the Judiciary Committee multiple times, 
I support the nomination of Mr. Bove. He has a strong legal background 
and has served his country honorably.
  I believe he will be diligent, capable, and a fair jurist. My 
Republican colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee agree, and that 
is why he was reported out of committee with every Republican 
supporting his nomination.
  It is no surprise to anyone who follows this nomination that I have 
serious concerns with how my Democratic colleagues have conducted 
themselves.
  The vicious rhetoric, unfair accusations, and abuse directed at Mr. 
Bove by some on this committee have crossed the line.
  I wish I could say that this posture has been limited to just this 
nomination, but unfortunately it appears to be a pattern. Since the 
very beginning of this Congress, Democrats have engaged in obstruction 
campaigns for nearly every one of President Trump's nominees.
  Their playbook has included maximum procedural obstruction, unfair 
media attacks, repeated attempts to allege misconduct, and demands for 
delayed consideration, records, and investigations. This Congress 
alone, Democrats have sent at least 26 letters to 17 agencies or 
parties demanding records, delays, or investigations into President 
Trump's nominees, just in the Judiciary Committee. Like clockwork, just 
before a hearing or a vote, we get another breathless accusation that 
one of President Trump's nominees needs to be--you guessed it--
investigated. I am afraid that what we have seen recently on the Bove 
nomination has been more of the same.
  My Democratic colleagues have tried to weaponize my respect for 
whistleblowers and the whole whistleblowing process against me and, in 
turn, against Mr. Bove. Now I am here to set the record straight.
  I take whistleblower complaints very seriously. During both 
Republican and Democratic administrations, I have spent over four 
decades defending patriotic whistleblowers. My conduct in defending 
whistleblowers and running bipartisan investigations stands in stark 
contrast to the conduct of my Democratic colleagues.
  During the first Trump administration, I defended the Ukraine 
whistleblower's use of the whistleblower process even despite serious 
concerns about the substance of his complaint. When I was last 
chairman, I interviewed Donald Trump, Jr., and other Republicans as 
part of my bipartisan investigation into the alleged Russian collusion, 
and that was conducted through the Senate Judiciary Committee.
  But when it came to the Biden family and the Biden administration, 
despite serious allegations and overwhelming evidence of misconduct, 
Democrats made no effort to investigate or conduct similar interviews 
like I did during a Republican administration. In fact, they worked 
hard to thwart any attempt at oversight. Now, these weren't fringe 
claims; they involved potential crimes squarely within the Judiciary 
Committee jurisdiction.
  The Trump administration has said that Mr. Reuveni isn't a 
whistleblower. Now, I publicly disagreed with the position of the Trump 
administration. Now, that happens to be the opposite posture that my 
Democratic colleagues took with the IRS whistleblowers who blew the 
whistle on the Biden administration. My Democratic colleagues tried to 
destroy those whistleblowers and use the press to falsely claim that 
they were not, in fact, whistleblowers.
  No one can say that I don't take whistleblower complaints seriously 
or that I don't investigate allegations in good faith. I have always 
said my door is open to whistleblowers, and my efforts regarding the 
Bove nomination show that this is true.
  Mr. Reuveni made allegations against Mr. Bove--can you believe 
this?--just the morning before the nomination hearing. The allegations 
broke in a New York Times story, and the paper, as you would expect, 
gleefully ran the unvetted accusations without so much as giving the 
Justice Department or even the nominee the opportunity to respond.
  At our Bove hearing in the Judiciary Committee, the Deputy Attorney 
General flatly denied the allegations in public statements, and the 
nominee denied them under oath both in the hearing and in response to 
written questions from members of the Judiciary Committee.
  Then my Democratic colleagues received yet additional records from 
the whistleblower on July 1 and July 7 but hid them from Republicans. I 
didn't receive these accusations and records until July 10. Now--can 
you believe it?--that is the very same day that Mr. Bove's nomination 
was scheduled for its first markup.

  The coordinated media strategy--let me repeat that. That is so 
important--how the media works in line with what the Democrats want to 
accomplish on this nomination. The coordinated media strategy involved 
a New York Times exclusive about the files and a Democratic press 
release containing a misleading summary of the documents. Why? All 
designed to smear Mr. Bove.
  This timeline raises serious concerns, and it is legitimate to raise 
them as a major problem.
  If my Democratic colleagues wanted to investigate allegations, they 
should have come to this Senator, and we could have vetted the 
allegations in good faith together. They didn't want this; they wanted 
to run a one-sided media campaign.
  Regardless, I still did my job and investigated. My staff reviewed 
the disclosure document by document and analyzed the facts. The result: 
Almost none of the material referenced Mr. Bove at all. More 
concerningly, the Democrats' summary grossly mischaracterized the 
documents that it purported to summarize. In short, the documents 
didn't say what the Democrats say the documents said.
  My staff also interviewed multiple people who were present for the 
March 14 meeting described in the whistleblower disclosure. Four 
separate people other than Mr. Bove who were present at the meeting 
told us the following: First, there was never any directive to ignore a 
court order, and secondly, each of them left the meeting with the 
understanding that the Justice Department would aggressively litigate 
but would follow court orders.
  My staff then spoke to numerous other individuals, including many 
current and former Justice Department employees who wanted to share 
information about the Bove nomination. All told, my staff interviewed 
or spoke with more than a dozen individuals who came forward to discuss 
the Bove nomination.

[[Page S4799]]

  With respect to the initial whistleblower allegations, even if you 
accept most of the claims as true, there is still no scandal. 
Government lawyers aggressively litigating and interpreting court 
orders isn't misconduct; that is common sense. That is not misconduct 
because that is what lawyers always do.
  Concerningly, the minority repeatedly recast discussion of litigation 
strategy as wrongdoing, even discussions that reflected the 
government's official litigation positions, some positions which 
prevailed on appeal.
  Now, pay attention to what--the whistleblower alleged misconduct, but 
10 days after the key event he describes, he signed a brief stating, 
without qualification, that ``the government has complied with the 
Court's orders in this case.'' Now, this is the very same person that 
you have been reading about in the media that said that Bove was 
telling everybody not to follow court orders. Ten days after the key 
event he described, that person said this:

       The government has complied with the Court's orders in this 
     case.

  If he believed the Department defied court orders, why sign a brief 
as an officer of the court saying that it had complied?
  During the hearing, Mr. Bove firmly denied the allegations. He 
testified under oath:

       I did not advise any Justice Department attorney to violate 
     court orders.

  Recent public reporting backs his account. Months before the 
whistleblower came forward, his former supervisor wrote in a letter to 
Mr. Bove:

       [A]dvised our team that we must avoid a court order halting 
     an upcoming operation to implement the Act at all costs.

  This statement confirms Mr. Bove advised his team to avoid triggering 
a court order, not defy a court order, and that is consistent with 
Bove's testimony before the committee.
  Now, everything I gave you up to now was the initial allegation, but 
now, on the very eve of Mr. Bove's final vote here in the U.S. Senate, 
the Democrats and their media allies have launched yet another salvo 
against Mr. Bove. On Friday--in other words, 3 days ago, maybe 4 days 
ago; you count it--we learned from social media that two other 
whistleblowers allegedly have derogatory information about Mr. Bove. 
One whistleblower said that they have filed a complaint with the 
inspector general. My staff requested the complaint and to speak with 
the whistleblower. Their requests were denied.
  Another group, a group called Justice Connection, publicly alleged 
that a whistleblower has evidence that Bove wasn't truthful in his 
hearings and that ``the whistleblower has tried to share [this] 
info[rmation] with Republican Senators for weeks and they [haven't 
responded].''
  To the extent that anyone is suggesting that this Senator Grassley 
hasn't been willing to receive and consider relative evidence, 
everybody that knows me would know that is just plain false.
  I am the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and I represent 
Republicans on this committee. Regarding this whistleblower, my office 
was not proactively approached.
  Indeed, since we saw these news reports on Friday, my staff 
proactively and repeatedly reached out to whistleblower lawyers asking 
to see the evidence that they apparently had already shared with 
multiple Democrats and also with the media.
  My staff assured them that we would review the evidence in good 
faith. But now, here, all weekend--I want to repeat, all weekend--my 
staff was stonewalled and given the runaround. Any assertion that I or 
my staff was uninterested in the evidence is entirely false.
  It wasn't until Monday morning--so you got Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 
Monday morning--that my staff received any information. Even then, it 
was bits and pieces of information created by lawyers, not original 
information.
  My staff tried over and over to get all the information, only to be 
rejected. My staff was not shown the underlying transcript of the 
meeting until this morning. They were shown what was represented to be 
verbatim transcript of a meeting, but we still didn't have access to 
the underlying source.
  So what did I do? I followed my usual process. I asked Mr. Bove to 
respond to the allegations that his testimony was inconsistent with the 
evidence that we saw for the first time Monday.
  And he sent me a letter doing just that. I plan to make that letter 
public.
  I have also asked permission to make this transcript public as well, 
but I don't know whether the lawyer will give me that permission.
  In his letter, Mr. Bove flatly denies the allegations that he misled 
the committee. He explained that he testified truthfully in response to 
``compound yes or no questions that sought to attribute words to me 
that I did not use during the February 14, 2025, video meeting.''
  He also responds to the attacks on his character and rejects the 
allegations against him.
  Viewed in light of the transcript, Bove's responses to compound 
hostile questions about specific words used in a meeting that happened 
months before his hearing do not, to me, indicate deliberately false 
and misleading testimony.
  And, more importantly, the substance of the meeting itself does not 
reflect misconduct. It reflected a sympathetic tone during a turbulent 
time and appropriately characterizes the role of a Justice Department 
attorney.
  In the meeting, Mr. Bove specifically acknowledged that being a 
Justice Department attorney means ``following orders from the President 
or [from] the Attorney General, unless we view them as unlawful or 
unethical.''
  He apologized to the attorneys present for tension and told them:

       I don't want to put pressure on you.

  I am also curious at my Democrat colleagues' newfound interest in 
candor to the committee. During the Biden administration, Kristen 
Clarke unequivocally perjured herself before the Judiciary Committee in 
response to written questions.
  When the information came to light after her confirmation, Democrats 
do what Democrats do: They closed ranks and refused to join Republicans 
in their call to hold her accountable.
  Democrats likewise expressed no interest in evaluating the misleading 
and inconsistent testimony from numerous other Biden appointees.
  When this committee considered the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh--
now on the Supreme Court--I criticized the tactics that Democrats 
employed, and I said this:

       The Ranking Member sat on these allegations for nearly 
     seven weeks, only to reveal them at the eleventh hour when it 
     appeared that Judge Kavanaugh was headed toward nomination.

  Now getting back to the Bove nomination, with respect to it, as with 
other nominees this Congress, Democrats appeared to have dusted off the 
playbook that they devised against Justice Kavanaugh.
  They hid allegedly relevant information until a politically opportune 
time and then used it as an ambush to hurt the nominee. As I said about 
the Democrats' conduct during director--FBI Director Patel's 
nomination:

       This is becoming a pattern, and I will not facilitate a 
     campaign to undermine the results of the election by delaying 
     consideration of nominees.

  If anyone, including my colleagues, has information regarding a 
nominee--any nominee--that they believe is relevant to their fitness 
for office, I expect them to share it with me in a timely and candid 
manner so that the allegations can be fairly vetted, as opposed to what 
I have just told you: that we got most of this information from the 
Democrats that the whistleblowers were--the Democrats were peddling the 
whistleblowers' accusations the morning before the hearing, the morning 
before we were considering the nomination.
  Everybody should know that my door is always open to whistleblowers. 
And while I may not always agree with someone else's conclusions, I 
will always fairly consider any information brought to my office.
  My message to the three whistleblowers in this case is this: Just 
because I may disagree with the conclusions in a whistleblower 
disclosure, it doesn't mean that I don't support whistleblowers' rights 
to come forward. Whether I agree or disagree with whistleblowers, I 
will defend whistleblowers' rights.

[[Page S4800]]

  Reasonable minds can differ, and when I direct my staff to allocate 
resources away from other ongoing whistleblower projects to handle 
situations like Bove, their efforts ought to be respected and given 
good faith treatment.
  But contrary to what happened, this eleventh-hour media smear by my 
colleagues based on information that was hidden from the committee, 
these are all unacceptable, and I won't stand for it as a delay or 
obstruction tactic. This tactic didn't work against Justice Kavanaugh, 
and it won't work against Mr. Bove.
  Mr. President, I look forward to supporting Mr. Bove and urge all of 
my colleagues to do the same.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The Democratic whip.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I wanted to make a very brief response 
about whistleblowers. Senator Grassley of Iowa is recognized for his 
working with whistleblowers in a constructive way throughout his Senate 
career. I don't question that.
  In this particular case, Mr. Bove is seeking an appellate court 
position, which came before the committee, and we were contacted by a 
whistleblower who worked with him at the Department of Justice.
  This man has now been disclosed and identified. He wanted to give us 
information which he said contradicted the testimony of Mr. Bove before 
the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was willing to appear before the 
Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Grassley, under oath and tell 
us his side of the story.
  I don't think you could ask for much more in someone who could 
subject themselves to possible perjury charges by misleading the 
committee and do so under oath. I think he was a credible person. I am 
sorry the Republicans on the committee rejected his offer. It would 
have brought more truth to light.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.