In response to the Senate Judiciary Democrats walking out of the votes to advance Jeanine Pirro and Emil Bove’s nominations, DNC Chair Ken Martin released the following statement:

“Donald Trump is trying to stack the legal system with lackeys who will help him evade the law, but Senate Democrats will not stand for it. Jeanine Pirro and Emil Bove are not just unqualified to serve — they both have a long history of putting Trump above the law. While Pirro repeatedly threatened to throw Trump’s political opponents in jail and prosecute judges and local officials, Bove has been busy racking up accusations of prosecutorial misconduct and perjury as his fellow prosecutors warn that empowering him would be ‘dangerous.’ Bove and Pirro are unfit, unhinged, and should be nowhere near our legal system. Republicans need to remember their oath is to protect the Constitution and the rule of law — not Trump.”  

NEW: Senate Republicans voted to advance longtime Donald Trump loyalists Jeanine Pirro and Emil Bove, ignoring their long histories of incompetent leadership and attacks on the rule of law.  

FactPost: “Senate Democrats walk out of Emil Bove’s nomination hearing.”

Scott MacFarlane, CBS: “Blocked from further debate, Democrats have just walked out of vote on nominations of Emil Bove for federal judgeship and Jeanine Pirro for US Attorney for DC

“Those nominations will now be ‘favorably reported’ out by the Senate panel for full Senate vote”

ABC News: “Pirro has been a longtime ally of Trump … She was an early supporter of his 2016 campaign and publicly defended him during the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape scandal. 

“Following Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, Pirro pushed false allegations of election fraud involving voting machines and was later among the Fox News employees named in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit for broadcasting false claims about the company. Fox News eventually settled for $787.5 million and admitted the statements were false.”

Washington Post: “Bove served on the president’s personal defense team during the Biden administration, representing Trump as he fought multiple state and federal criminal indictments. Inside the Justice Department, Bove is known as a combative Trump loyalist, defending the president’s agenda and demanding that political and career staffers align with the administration.”  

Pirro and Bove have a long history of defending the violent January 6 insurrectionists. 

New York Times: “Trump Officials Fire Jan. 6 Prosecutors and Plan Possible F.B.I. Purge”

“The acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, also told the acting leadership of the F.B.I. to compile a list of all agents and F.B.I. staff ‘assigned at any time to investigations and/or prosecutions’ relating to the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day a mob of Trump supporters stormed through the halls of Congress. …

“Mr. Bove offered no evidence those targeted had done anything improper, illegal or unethical.”

CNN: “Pirro endorsed threat to criminally investigate January 6 prosecutors in office she now runs” 

“In one January 2025 episode of her WABC radio show, Pirro agreed with a guest who said Justice Department prosecutors handling January 6, 2021, cases should be criminally charged. ‘I absolutely agree with that,’ Pirro responded. In another November 2024 episode, she expressed openness to targeting not just prosecutors but also the judge who oversaw Trump’s New York criminal trial. … 

“[Pirro also] downplayed the January 6 violence as a political ‘narrative,’ calling for a Capitol Police officer and DOJ officials to be investigated. …

“Pirro also asked why they were not identifying for a possible prosecution the Capitol Police officer who shot and killed a January 6 rioter.” 

Pirro and Bove are the perfect lackeys to carry out Trump’s agenda of revenge and retribution — repeatedly putting him above the law and endorsing investigations into his political opponents, including prosecutors, local officials, and judges. 

NPR: “In the same memo, with the subject line ‘Terminations,’ acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered the firing of eight senior FBI officials, leading to panic at the FBI of a possible purge of thousands of agents in retaliation for their work on Capitol riot cases.

“Since then, FBI employees were instructed to fill out a survey that would detail their specific role in the investigations.”

CNN: “A CNN KFile review of just a portion of Pirro’s radio shows from 2021 through 2025 found that she has repeatedly endorsed criminal investigations into Trump’s perceived political enemies, including federal prosecutors, local officials and judges involved in his various legal cases. …

“[Pirro] called for a special prosecutor to ‘go after’ the Clintons. And she suggested that former FBI Director James Comey ‘needs to be the target of an active criminal investigation’ and ‘someone who is looked at.’” 

Emil Bove has a long history of reported prosecutorial misconduct, perjury, and attacks on the judiciary. 

Associated Press: “Bove acknowledged his prosecutors had told a ‘flat lie’ to the judge. … and jokingly told a colleague that ‘we will get cocaine for you’ so she could pull an all-nighter to repair some of the damage. … 

“[T]he judge … determined there had been ‘prosecutorial misconduct.’ She found that prosecutors had engaged in a ‘deliberate attempt to obscure’ the truth and sought to ‘bury’ a potentially exculpatory document. ‘The disclosure failures and misrepresentations in this case,’ she wrote in a 2021 opinion, ‘represent grave derelictions of prosecutorial responsibility.’” 

Bove has also repeatedly put Trump’s political wishes above the law, including allegedly instructing DOJ lawyers to “ignore court orders” when they contradict Trump’s agenda and refusing to rule out a third Trump term. 

New York Times: “A senior Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, told subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill the president’s aggressive deportation campaign, according to a whistle-blower complaint by a department lawyer who has since been fired. …

“In Mr. Reuveni’s telling, Mr. Bove discussed disregarding court orders, adding an expletive for emphasis, and other top law enforcement officials showed themselves ready to stonewall judges or lie to them to get their way. … 

“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. …

“‘Bove stated that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts “fuck you” and ignore any such order,’ according to the account. ‘Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room.’” 

CBS News: “Emil Bove declines to rule out 3rd Trump term or denounce Jan. 6 rioters in Senate questionnaire” 

Nine hundred Department of Justice alumni have sounded the alarm over Bove, warning he would be “dangerous” on the bench and would “disregard the Rule of Law.” 

USA Today: “900 DOJ alumni warn Senate against putting ex-Trump lawyer Emil Bove on appellate court” 

“The letter was signed by officials who served from as far back as the Kennedy administration through the current Trump administration …” 

Washington Post: “Former D.C. U.S. prosecutors oppose Emil Bove appeals court nomination” 

“A group of former federal prosecutors for the District of Columbia urged the Senate in a letter sent Monday evening to reject the nomination of Emil Bove for an appeals court judgeship in Philadelphia, calling the former personal lawyer for President Donald Trump ‘the worst conceivable nominee’ for a lifetime judicial post. … 

“They now argue Bove’s conduct is ‘far worse and more dangerous.’ [than Ed Martin] …

“Bove ‘has demonstrated a willingness to ignore his oath to the Constitution and to disregard the Rule of Law in an effort to conform to every possible whim of the President,’ wrote letter organizers … Five other former federal prosecutors who previously served under both Republican and Democratic administrations joined the letter.” 

Like many of Trump’s allies, Pirro also has a long history of spreading baseless conspiracy theories.

CNN: “Pirro has also regularly expressed … a variety of baseless claims, including that young children in public schools are given books teaching how to perform oral sex, that New York state allows doctors to kill newborn babies, and that undocumented immigrants can freely vote using fake names in multiple states. …

“Among her more shocking and demonstrably false claims, Pirro said New York law allows doctors to kill fully delivered, breathing babies — a conspiracy theory repeatedly debunked by multiple state investigations — to sell their body parts to Planned Parenthood.”