Trump's Button Man at the DOJ

 

Emil Bove III.
Is the face a reflection of the soul?

Emil Bove III was one of Trump's lead attorneys in the Manhattan fraud trial, which despite Bove's aggressive dissing of the trial judge still led to 34 felony convictions for Trump -- Bove, that shark lawyer, was put into the Department of Justice as the acting Deputy Director as soon as Trump was inaugurated, and he quickly began summoning career attorneys to his top-floor office "to calmly deliver the news they were being transferred, marginalized, or otherwise shoved to the exits" (Glenn Thrush et al.). Their sins? You know without asking. They participated in investigations of Donald Jethro Trump.

What else has Bove been up to at Justice? He forced the transfers of "top nonpolitical officials who were seen as a bulwark against political interference." And he unilaterally fired Capitol riot prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in Washington. 

"At no time has Mr. Bove offered evidence those he targeted had done anything improper, illegal or unethical. Instead he has cited the president’s authority under the Constitution." (NYTimes)

And then, to cap off his first week as Acting Deputy Director of DOJ and to earn his Assassin Badge First Class in the Trump Scouts, he launched the effort to collect a complete list of all FBI agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases. That naming-names demand by Bove caused unanticipated, strong pushback from Acting FBI Director Brian "Drizz" Driscoll and his Acting Deputy Director Robert C. Kissane. (I've written about the fearlessness of "Drizz" before in his standing up against autocracy.) According to Glenn Thrush and his fellow investigative reporters, Drizz Driscoll "was neither persuaded nor intimidated by Mr. Bove. Neither was Mr. Kissane."

Drizz correctly saw Bove's unprecedented demand for the complete list of FBI agents who tracked down the men who beat Capitol police to a pulp -- he saw that move as prelude to a purge. Plus, according to Thrush et al., "It provoked a swift, negative reaction among the F.B.I.’s conservative rank-and-file, a work force that [had been] particularly receptive to Mr. Trump’s law-and-order message." Leaders of the conservative FBI Agents Association wrote a letter of protest to Congress: “Special agents who risk their lives protecting this country” are being targeted “for carrying out the orders they were given by their superiors,” the letter said.

Helps explain why the latest Pew Research polling on the J6 pardons doesn't look so good for Jethro among his own slavish supporters: