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emil bove
Report Highlights ‘Pattern of Dishonesty' on 2020 Election From Trump’s Far-Right Judicial Picks
“It is unprecedented for lifetime nominees to the federal bench to provide dishonest and misleading answers about historical facts," said the president of Demand Justice.
Nov 11, 2025
President Donald Trump has appointed 27 judges to federal courts so far in his second term, and in addition to their right-wing interpretation of the law, an analysis of the judges' comments to senators during the confirmation process reveals a key commonality between the president's appointees: All were willing to evade direct questions about whether Trump lost the 2020 election and whether the US Capitol was attacked by a violent pro-Trump mob on January 6, 2021.
Demand Justice examined the Questions for the Record (QFRs) that were submitted by the Senate to the 27 judicial nominees regarding the election and January 6, and found that their answers to those two specific questions were nearly uniform in many cases—repeating certain phrases verbatim and "overall, using unusual and evasive language that’s almost entirely outside the normal, historical, and common lexicon used to describe such events."
None of the 27 nominees affirmatively answered that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, as proven by numerous courts that rejected lawsuits claiming otherwise and by both Republican and Democratic election officials. Instead, the nominees said Biden was "certified" as the winner, and 16 of them said he "served" as president.
Some of the nominees, including Emil Bove of the US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, Whitney Hermandorfer of the Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Kyle Dudek of the Middle District of Florida, expanded on their answers, saying they would avoid "opining on the broader political or policy debate regarding the conduct of the 2020 presidential election."
Demand Justice said those comments "strongly, and falsely," suggested the 2020 election results are still a matter of legal dispute.
Josh Orton, president of the group, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday that the nominees' answers preserved "their ability to say, 'I did not contradict Donald Trump' on what we know are the two most third-rail issues to Donald Trump."
"If nominees don't answer these two questions, I think it amounts to, essentially, a political loyalty test," said Orton.
NEW: Demand Justice report finds a pattern of dishonesty and evasion from Trump's judicial nominees. Watch as @joshorton explains on @Morning_Joe how Trump's judges are effectively taking loyalty tests to the President. pic.twitter.com/MFj2m8gElj
— Demand Justice (@WeDemandJustice) November 11, 2025
Regarding questions about whether the US Capitol was attacked on January 6 and whether the attack was an insurrection, said Demand Justice, "not one nominee was willing to speak to the events that occurred on that day."
Twenty-one of them, including Bove, Hermandorfer, and Joshua Divine of District Courts for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri, characterized the attack—in which Trump supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election results—as a matter of debate.
None of the nominees mentioned the law enforcement officers who died as a result of the attack, even though some mentioned violence against law enforcement broadly in their other QFR answers; the fact that the House and Senate chambers were broken into; or the death threats rioters directed at then-Vice President Mike Pence.
“It is unprecedented for lifetime nominees to the federal bench to provide dishonest and misleading answers about historical facts—and it is deeply concerning that Trump’s nominees are parroting such strikingly similar language, the president’s own language, to avoid telling the truth,” said Orton.
Orton added that "the kicker" of the report is that 15 members of the Democratic Caucus have voted for Trump's judicial nominees despite their evasive and dishonest answers about January 6 and Trump's 2020 loss.
"Excuse me? People died," said Orton. "If you're willing to appease Trump's big lies, you have no business anywhere near a court, period."
This morning, @joshorton unveiled a new report that found all 27 of Trump's judicial nominees, who have gone through the process in his second term, have used strikingly similar, evasive language to answer basic questions about the 2020 election and January 6th. Watch --> pic.twitter.com/WaqdyFcAC7
— Demand Justice (@WeDemandJustice) November 11, 2025
Democrats who have voted in favor of confirming Trump's nominees include Sens. Chris Coons (Del.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.).
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DOJ Whistleblower Details Being Ordered to Lie in Court About Kilmar Abrego García
"It is the highest, most egregious violation of a lawyer's code of ethics to mislead a court with intent," said Erez Reuveni.
Oct 20, 2025
A former US Department of Justice lawyer on Sunday described how an appointee of President Donald Trump told him to lie about Kilmar Abrego García’s supposed ties to the gang MS-13 after he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador earlier this year.
During an interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes," whistleblower Erez Reuveni said that he was told by a superior at DOJ to argue in court against bringing Abrego García back to the US on the grounds that he was an MS-13 member and a "terrorist."
Reuveni said that he refused to sign onto this strategy because the claims being made about Abrego García were flatly untrue.
"That is not correct," he said of the claims. "That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is, that is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief."
Reuveni went on to say that, even if Abrego García had been a gang member, his right to due process was still being violated by the Trump DOJ.
"What matters here is that they did everything they did to him in violation of his due process rights," he said. "What's to stop them if they decide they don't like you anymore, to say you're a criminal, you're a member of MS-13, you're a terrorist, what's to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie?"
Reuveni also discussed how the Trump DOJ had defied court orders by rushing to send a plane full of purportedly undocumented immigrants to be detained in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a facility that for years has drawn criticism for alleged systematic human rights abuses.
Specifically, he said that former Trump DOJ official Emil Bove—who was confirmed to a lifetime seat as a federal judge earlier this year, even after Reuveni first spoke out against him—said during a meeting in February that the department was to not let anything interfere with the planes that were transporting the immigrants to El Salvador, even if it meant defying direct court orders.
The very next day, government lawyer Drew Ensign, who had been at that meeting, told Judge James Boasberg in court that he had no idea whether the government was planning imminently to fly the planes out of the country. Reuveni said this shocked him because it was impossible to believe that Ensign sincerely had no idea that the government was planning to fly the planes out that very day.
"It is the highest, most egregious violation of a lawyer's code of ethics to mislead a court with intent," Reuveni emphasized. "We really did tell the court, screw you. We really did just tell the courts, we don't care about your order. You can't tell us what to do. That was just a real gut punch."
"60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley noted during the interview that while Reuveni previously spoke out about Bove's directive to disregard court orders, the interview on Sunday marked the first time since then that the former DOJ lawyer had broadcast his allegations in a TV appearance.
Reuveni acknowledged that the interview brought up safety concerns for him and his family.
"At the same time, I think about what we're losing in this moment, I think about why I went to the Department of Justice—to do justice. I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution," he said. "I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now.”
This is the first time former DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni has shown his face in such a public way. He says he felt he needed to speak out despite his safety concerns.
“I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution,” Reuveni says. “I would not be faithfully abiding by my… pic.twitter.com/osLCRDIfVm
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 19, 2025
Abrego Garcia was detained in El Salvador for two months, with the Trump administration repeatedly claiming it had no way to return him to the US, before he was finally transferred to the US, where he is facing human smuggling charges. He was transferred to a detention facility in Pennsylvania last month and the Trump administration is still seeking to deport him.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges in June.
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Trump FBI Director 'Acted Unlawfully' and 'Deliberately Chose' to Politicize Agency: Lawsuit
Patel allegedly told an FBI official that "the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn't forgotten it."
Sep 10, 2025
A new lawsuit alleges that Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel knowingly broke the law during a campaign to politicize the entire agency.
In a complaint filed Wednesday, former FBI officials Brian Driscoll Jr., Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans claim that Patel "not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people."
The complaint then laid out evidence of Patel's alleged lawbreaking, including a conversation in which the FBI director said that he had been directed by White House officials "to fire anyone who they identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against President Donald J. Trump."
According to Driscoll, Patel told him that there was nothing he could do to prevent these agents from losing their jobs because "the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn't forgotten it." The complaint says Driscoll proceeded to inform Patel that firing FBI agents for this reason would be illegal, to which he responded that "he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal and that he could be sued and later deposed."
The lawsuit also details a conversation that Driscoll had with Paul Ingrassia, a 29-year-old White House liaison who directly asked him questions of an overtly political nature, including:
- "Who did you vote for?"
- "When did you start supporting President Trump?"
- "Have you voted for a Democrat in the last five elections?"
Driscoll refused to answer any of these questions, the lawsuit stated.
The complaint further sheds light on the actions of Emil Bove, a former Trump attorney who earlier this year was confirmed as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
During a meeting with Bove in late January, Driscoll and Jensen informed him that messages from the Office of Personnel Management urging federal employees to voluntarily resign or face potential termination were creating "panic and anxiety" among FBI agents.
Bove allegedly responded that creating panic and anxiety "was the intent" of the messages.
In addition to all this, the complaint offers insights into the way that Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino react to criticism from right-wing influencers on social media.
In one instance, the complaint alleges, Patel and Bongino found themselves taking heat from some prominent accounts on X because they'd promoted Jensen, who had played a role investigating and prosecuting Trump-supporting Capitol rioters, to serve as acting director in charge of the Washington Field Office.
Patel, tired of the criticism he was receiving for promoting Jensen, asked him if he would consider filing defamation suits against the angry internet trolls to take some pressure off him.
"Jensen declined, noting that he was unconcerned with the viewpoints of online personalities and would remain focused on the FBI's mission," the complaint notes.
Driscoll, Jensen, and Evans were all ousted from the FBI this past August as part of what critics contend was an authoritarian purge whose goal was "to weaponize federal law enforcement and replace highly experienced public servants with political hacks eager to carry out Trump's retribution agenda."
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