Emil Bove, a federal appeals court judge who previously served as President Trump's personal attorney, is accused of an ethics violation for attending the president's rally-style speech Tuesday night.
Why it matters: The complaint from a watchdog group alleges that Bove's presence at the event runs afoul of two clear pillars of judicial ethics: to avoid impropriety and political activity. It could result in disciplinary action.
- Bove's office declined to comment to Axios when reached Thursday. The White House did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment about the complaint.
Driving the news: Fix the Court, a watchdog and advocacy group, alleged that Bove violated multiple sections of the governing Code of Conduct for U.S. judges in a judicial misconduct complaint filed Wednesday.
- "There is no prohibition, of course, against a federal judge attending an event at which a President is speaking," wrote Gabe Roth, the group's executive director, in the complaint addressed to Chief Judge Michael Chagares.
- However, the president's Pennsylvania event — billed as a celebration of his economic wins that turned into a campaign-style speech with attacks on the "radical left" — represented "a far cry from the State of the Union or a state dinner for its abject partisanship," Roth writes.
- He argued it "should have been obvious to Judge Bove, either at the start of the rally or fairly close to it, that this was a highly charged, highly political event that no federal judge should have been within shouting distance of."
- "Last night's event in Pennsylvania was barely distinguishable (i.e., only temporally) from a Trump rally in 2020 or 2024, both of which were obvious political activities," Roth wrote.
The other side: Bove reportedly told a reporter from MS NOW at the event that he attended "just ... as a citizen coming to watch the president speak."
- The reporter shared a clip of Bove in the crowd as Trump called for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a U.S. citizen from Somalia, to "get the hell out" of the country.
The big picture: Critics of Trump's move to nominate Bove to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit have questioned Bove's ability to be impartial on the bench.
- Before he was narrowly confirmed, Bove was tied to a number of Justice Department controversies, including the push to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
- Trump said Bove would "do anything" necessary as a federal judge to "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN."
- At the same time, the White House has repeatedly attacked what it sees as "activist judges" whose orders and rulings have stymied the president's agenda.
Go deeper: Trump stacks DOJ with his former personal lawyers
