\n<\/p>\n
Trump nominees Emil Bove, left, and Jeanine Pirro.<\/span>Mother Jones illustration; Brian Cahn\/Zuma; Bill Clark\/CQ Roll Call\/Zuma<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite vociferous objections<\/span> by Democrats, the Senate Judiciary Committee looks set as of Thursday to approve Donald Trump\u2019s former personal lawyer Emil Bove, now a senior Justice Department staffer, as a federal appellate court judge,\u00a0and judge-turned-Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as US Attorney for the District of Columbia\u2014with vital support from North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.<\/p>\n Tillis is just one of a dozen GOP senators who have indicated plans to vote for both Bove and Pirro in committee. But Tillis, who recently announced<\/a>, while vocally opposing Trump\u2019s \u201cBig, Beautiful Bill,\u201d that he won\u2019t seek reelection next year, is the only one who stated<\/a>\u2014just last week\u2014that President Trump \u201cshould know if there is anyone coming up for a nomination through any committee of my jurisdiction that excused January 6, that they\u2019re not going to get confirmed in my remaining tenure in the US Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n Bove recently gained attention when a former Justice Department prosecutor alleged<\/a> that, as a top subordinate to deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Bove told subordinates to violate court orders to execute Trump\u2019s deportation plans: Bove told prosecutors to consider telling courts \u201cfuck you<\/a>\u201d if judges raised legal objections, the whistleblower said. Bove, who denies saying that, also led the administration\u2019s push to drop federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, a reversal that led to the resignations of many federal prosecutors in New York and Washington, and which Bove himself\u2014while denying a \u201cquid pro quo\u201d\u2014linked<\/a> to Adams allowing Trump to enforce his immigration agenda in the country\u2019s largest city.<\/p>\n Bove told prosecutors to consider telling courts \u201cfuck you\u201d in response to legal objections, the whistleblower said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n But Bove also served<\/a> as arguably Trump\u2019s top henchman in leading an effort to punish federal officials who investigated and prosecuted Capitol rioters. Bove ordered<\/a> the firing of January 6 prosecutors, pushed<\/a> FBI leaders to give him a list of agents who worked on Capitol insurrection cases, and advised Trump on an executive order offering blanket amnesty to about 1,600 January 6 defendants.<\/p>\n Pirro, as a Fox News host, was a leading<\/a> promoter<\/a> of Trump\u2019s false claims that he won the 2020 election. She cited Sidney Powell\u2019s infamous, bizarre, and baseless <\/a>claims of an international conspiracy to rig the 2020 election to urge<\/a> states that Biden won not to certify his electoral votes. Four days before the attack on Congress, Pirro used her show<\/a> to egg on election deniers. And she called<\/a>, this year, for January 6 prosecutors to face criminal charges.<\/p>\n In response to senators\u2019 questions about January 6, which Mother Jones<\/em> obtained, both nominees dodged and weaved, parsing their answers in an apparent effort to avoid angering Trump while also stopping short of overtly challenging Tillis. The North Carolina Republican in May torpedoed<\/a> the nomination of Ed Martin, Pirro\u2019s predecessor as acting US Attorney in Washington\u2014due, Tillis said, to Martin\u2019s ties<\/a> to January 6 rioters. Still, both nominees, when pressed, sided with the president whose false claims incited the January 6 riot, and who continues to publicly push for DOJ to use its power to back those lies.<\/p>\n Asked by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) whether he denounced \u201cthe January 6 insurrection,\u201d Bove demurred. \u201cThe characterization of the events on January 6 is a matter of significant political debate,\u201d he wrote, citing ongoing litigation. If Bove wanted to condemn January 6 without the \u201cinsurrection\u201d characterization, he didn\u2019t do it elsewhere in 165 pages of questions and answers.<\/p>\n In a January 31, 2025, memo ordering the firing of January 6 prosecutors, Bove wrote that<\/a> Trump had \u201cappropriately characterized\u201d the cases they pursued\u00a0as \u201ca grave national injustice.\u201d Bove has since claimed that he ordered the firing of prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases only because they had been hired on a probationary basis. And he claimed his orders<\/a> to FBI leaders to compile lists of agents who investigated the attack were not an effort to identify them for punishment.<\/p>\n But when asked by the committee\u2019s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), about those actions, Bove again faulted DOJ efforts on January 6, even comparing the actions of DOJ and FBI personnel to those of the people who battled police officers at the Capitol.<\/p>\n \u201cI condemn all forms of illegal activity,\u201d Bove wrote. \u201cThat is especially true with respect to acts of violence against law enforcement. At the same time\u2026I find overreach and heavy-handed tactics by prosecutors and law enforcement to be equally unacceptable. These concerns are not mutually exclusive, and publicly available materials suggest that both concerns were implicated by some of the events on January 6, 2021.\u201d<\/p>\n Bove dodged many questions about January 6. He acknowledged advising Trump on his pardon on January 6 rioters, but also said he did not remember whether he helped draft Trump\u2019s executive order announcing the pardons.<\/p>\n Some of these evasions are simply odd. Bove, who himself worked on<\/a> January 6 prosecutions while working in the US Attorney\u2019s office in Manhattan\u2014an effort he has worked to downplay\u2014told Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that he wasn\u2019t in Washington on January 6. But Bove also told Durbin, \u201cI do not recall where I was on January 6, 2021.\u201d<\/p>\n Bove, on another front, declined to state that Trump could not serve a third term without a constitutional amendment. (\u201cAs a nominee to the Third Circuit, it would not be appropriate for me to address how this Amendment would apply in an abstract hypothetical scenario.\u201d) Nor, like most Trump nominees, would Bove acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.<\/p>\n Pirro, who gave the same answer on the 2020 election, also evaded most questions she received on January 6.<\/p>\n In a January 2025 episode of a WABC show she hosted, a guest urged criminal investigations against January 6 prosecutors. Pirro responded<\/a>: \u201cI absolutely agree with that.\u201d But when asked by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Pirro said she could \u201cnot recall\u201d saying that.<\/p>\n Pirro also said she did \u201cnot recall\u201d a January 2, 2021, monologue<\/a> on her Fox News show in which she said: \u201cJanuary 6 will tell us whether there are any in Congress willing to battle for the America that those soldiers fought for, the one that you and I believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n Pirro has also vociferously defended Trump\u2019s amnesty for January 6 rioters, which, according to<\/a> Just Security<\/em>, included pardons for more than 600 people charged with assaulting or obstructing law enforcement\u2014among them 172 who admitted to assaulting officers. But Pirro, the acting US Attorney in the office that prosecuted those cases, said this week, in writing, that she is \u201cnot aware that \u2018rioters who were convicted of violent assaults on police officers\u2019\u201d received full pardons.<\/p>\n Back in May, after blocking Martin\u2019s nomination, Tillis said, \u201cWe have to be very, very clear that what happened on January 6 was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n But Tillis in recent days said<\/a> he would likely vote for Pirro due to what he called her strong \u201cmanagement\u201d of her office, and that he would follow<\/a> a \u201cstaff recommendation\u201d to back Bove. That probably means both will be confirmed.<\/p>\n Tillis\u2019 office did not respond to an inquiry about his planned votes, and he hasn\u2019t further explained his apparent reversal. Regardless, the \u201cclear\u201d message he urged his colleagues to take on denouncing January 6 has become a muddle.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n