JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
President Trump helped reshape the federal courts during his first term in office. With the help of a conservative Federalist Society and Republicans in the Senate, Trump confirmed more than 200 judges who serve for life. Now, the nominations machinery is restarting, and Trump's most controversial judge nominee is just one step away from taking the bench. His name is Emil Bove. And here to talk more about him and the courts is NPR's Carrie Johnson. Hi, Carrie.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Carrie, start, if you can, by just telling us who Emil Bove is and why his nomination is so controversial.
JOHNSON: Well, he's got some pretty strong credentials. He graduated from Georgetown Law School, did a couple of clerkships with conservative federal judges and then got a job in what might be the most prestigious U.S. attorney's office in the entire country in Manhattan. And, of course, he went on to defend Donald Trump and his various criminal cases. The White House communications director says Emil Bove's supremely qualified and a man of integrity. He says there's nobody more capable for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. And at his confirmation hearing, Bove told senators he's been misunderstood.
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EMIL BOVE: I am not anybody's henchman. I'm not an enforcer. I'm a lawyer from a small town who never expected to be in an arena like this.
JOHNSON: But Bove also ran into some complaints from colleagues and defense lawyers.
SUMMERS: Right. And if I understand, Carrie, he's also had an outsized role in his brief time at the Department of Justice. Is that right?
JOHNSON: He's the right-hand man to the deputy attorney general, which basically means all the day-to-day management at the Justice Department - both the big cases and policies - all of that ends up on his desk. And there's been a lot going on this year, from firing prosecutors who worked on those January 6 cases to walking away from the corruption case against New York City's Mayor Eric Adams. A federal judge said the decision to drop that case smacked of a bargain where DOJ would move to dismiss the case, and Mayor Adams would help advance Trump's aggressive deportation agenda. Nine hundred former Justice Department lawyers have urged the Senate to vote no on Emil Bove. I spoke with Stacey Young, who spent 18 years inside the DOJ. She now runs a group that connects people there with legal and ethics advice.
STACEY YOUNG: By voting to confirm Emil Bove to a lifetime appointment, they would be doing more than just placing someone problematic on the bench. They would be giving their stamp of approval on everything that's happened at DOJ in the last six months. And that is simply unacceptable.
SUMMERS: Carrie, we know that President Trump appointed a whole lot of judges during his first term. So how does Bove compare?
JOHNSON: During Trump's first term, Trump confirmed more than 200 judges with help from Senator Mitch McConnell, largely relying on a list the Federalist Society helped create. But Bove's not a member of the Federalist Society. He's loyal to Trump and close to people in the White House, though. That's what worries Gregg Nunziata who helped advance judicial nominees as a Republican Senate aid. He now works as executive director at Society for the Rule of Law.
GREGG NUNZIATA: I think there are reasons all Americans should be concerned about judges coming to the bench with political agendas and outcome-motivated orientation to judging. That should concern everybody.
SUMMERS: It's especially notable that President Trump is breaking with the Federalist Society here because that group has been just extremely successful at stacking the federal bench with very conservative judges, right?
JOHNSON: That success helped culminate in a 6 to 3 conservative supermajority on today's Supreme Court. That effort began over a generation ago in law schools, and it continued all the way through Donald Trump's first term in office, where nominees with conservative track records were closely vetted. Their writings were tracked. The idea was to ensure these very conservative lawyers would stay conservative and avoid the kind of drift that, say, former Justice David Souter and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may have represented.
SUMMERS: Right. OK, well, I mean, given the fact that the Federalist Society has been so successful, tell us why Trump soured on it.
JOHNSON: I think there's a simple reason. There are hundreds of cases that have been filed against the Trump administration this year challenging his policies, his immigration agenda, the efforts to remake the federal government. And the president has really been frustrated with lower court judges who ruled against him, judges that were appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents. Trump went so far as to attack Leonard Leo, the longtime Federalist Society official, in a social media post this year as he was losing in the lower courts. Trump called him a sleazebag.
SUMMERS: We'll just point out here that judges are supposed to be independent of the president who appointed them. They're not political actors. Carrie Johnson, how do you expect this to shape the judiciary, given the fact that these are lifetime appointments?
JOHNSON: Well, the Senate has already confirmed Trump's first federal judge. Several more are in the pipeline. There are fewer judicial vacancies now than in Trump's first go-round in the White House. And there's also some evidence judges may be delaying their retirement so their replacements are not picked by Trump.
SUMMERS: I mean, there are hundreds of federal judges. Bove is just one person. So is this confirmation really likely to make a difference in how Trump's policies fare in court?
JOHNSON: You know, this is a fair point. I've been talking with experts. They tell me appeals court judges sit on panels of three, so any one judge is not going to tip the balance of power. But if and when the president gets a vacancy on the Supreme Court, that nominee could have a lot more influence. It's not clear Emil Bove would be at the top of Trump's list, but people in the legal community tell me they think it's a possibility. Trump has been winning a lot this year in the Supreme Court, and that's ultimately where this matters.
SUMMERS: NPR's Carrie Johnson, thank you.
JOHNSON: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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