WASHINGTON (AP) — A group of Manhattan criminal defense attorneys was so concerned about prosecutor Emil Bove’s professionalism that they sent an email to his bosses.
One lawyer complained in the 2018 email that Bove was “completely reckless and out of control.†Another said he needed “adult supervision.†A third, a top federal public defender, said “he cannot be bothered to treat lesser mortals with respect.â€
Bove, , was hardly chastened.
Instead, he printed the email and pinned it on a cork board in his office for others to see, according to a person who worked with Bove. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss his former colleague, said the prosecutor considered the email to be a badge of honor.
Bove’s near decade as a prosecutor provides clues as to how he views his current role as President Donald Trump’s chief enforcer at the Justice Department. In just a month as the acting No. 2 official, the little-known Bove has plowed through norms and niceties, or .
Former prosecutors worry that Bove, , is settling scores for the president. Brushing aside such concerns, Bove has sought to aggressively implement Trump’s agenda in a way that is not at all surprising to many who knew him when he was litigating drug and terrorism cases.
“In my experience litigating against him, what he enjoyed most as a prosecutor was wielding power— the single worst possible trait for a public servant,†said Christine Chung, a former federal prosecutor who as a defense attorney has squared off against Bove.
The Justice Department declined to comment in response to an Associated Press request to interview Bove.
“He’s doing the job that Trump got elected to do,†said Christopher Kise, who worked with Bove on Trump’s defense team. “The process can sometimes get messy but if you’re going to bake a cake, you’ve got to break some eggs.â€
Turmoil at the Justice Department
As acting deputy attorney general, Bove has been instrumental in reshaping the Justice Department.
Particularly startling was his order for the FBI to turn over a list of thousands of agents who participated in Jan. 6 investigations, a request seen by some in the bureau as a precursor to a purge.
Trump has spent the better part of four years downplaying the seriousness of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that left more than 100 police officers injured.
Bove has embraced that view. In a letter ousting several top FBI executives on Jan. 31, Bove wrote that the FBI had “actively participated in what the president appropriately described as a ‘grave national injustice.'"
His actions have left former colleagues befuddled.
“It’s so not like the Emil that I knew,†said Chris O’Leary, a retired FBI agent who worked with Bove on Jan. 6-related investigations. “It’s almost like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.â€
Star Prosecutor
At the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, Bove irked fellow prosecutors and defense attorneys while prosecuting high profile narcotics and terrorism cases.
The AP spoke with 11 defense attorneys who raised questions about Bove’s aggressive tactics. A former Justice Department colleague recalled Bove trying to bigfoot other districts to take over high-profile cases. And a defense attorney said he watched in shock as Bove yelled at his client, a drug trafficker from Latin America, even though he was cooperating with the U.S. government in a major narcotics investigation.
Most of the attorneys spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation for speaking out.
The complaints culminated in March 2018. That’s when the head of the federal public defender’s office in Manhattan collected criticism about Bove from eight defense attorneys and forwarded the insights in an email to top officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, according to people familiar with the missive who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“He’s a real, recurrent problem, and he’s not representing the office in the way that I think you would want it represented,†David Patton, the public defender at the time, wrote in the email, which was reviewed by AP. Patton did not respond to a request for an interview.
About 18 months after the email was sent, Bove was promoted to be co-chief of the office’s national security and international narcotics unit. In that role, he oversaw the indictment of Venezuela's President on federal narco-terrorism charges.
Rebuked by judge
By 2020, a team of prosecutors Bove led was fending off allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. The actions came in the case of an Iranian banker accused of violating U.S. sanctions. At trial, attorneys for the banker alleged prosecutors failed to hand over evidence they considered beneficial to their client.
Bove, as a supervisor of the unit, was involved in trying to blunt the fallout, according to communications between prosecutors ordered released by the court in 2021 at the request of the AP.
In a Sunday night exchange with his co-chief after being admonished by a federal judge, Bove acknowledged his team had told a “flat lie†to the judge. He also vowed to “smash†the Iranian defendant, made a lewd comment about one of his attorneys and jokingly told a colleague that “we will get cocaine for you†so she could pull an all-nighter to repair the damage.
While U.S. District court Judge Alison Nathan did not find Bove’s team had intentionally withheld documents, she concluded that prosecutors had engaged in a “deliberate attempt to obscure†the truth.
The judge tossed the conviction and asked the Justice Department to launch an investigation of the prosecutors. That probe echoed Nathan’s conclusion, finding that prosecutors’ actions were “flawed†but not intentional or reckless, according to an published on the Justice Department’s website. A person familiar with the probe confirmed the summary referred to the Sadr case.
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