At Justice Dept., Bove Emerges as Trump’s Enforcer
In the past few weeks, Emil Bove III, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department, has summoned senior career officials to his upper-floor office at headquarters to calmly deliver the news they were being transferred, marginalized or otherwise shoved to the exits.
Mr. Bove, a former federal prosecutor who bonded with President Trump while serving on his criminal defense team, expressed sympathy and praised their service but refused to modify his orders, according to people briefed on the conversations.
Inside the department, Mr. Bove has quickly emerged as the Trump administration’s enforcer, demanding compliance and overseeing a series of personnel moves that have thrust him into the spotlight. Among them: the forced transfers of top nonpolitical officials seen as a bulwark against political interference, the firing of Capitol riot prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and, perhaps most significantly, the effort to collect a list of F.B.I. agents assigned to Jan. 6 cases.
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.
Mr. Bove is on good terms with West Wing officials, and he communicates regularly with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, on homeland security issues. But he is not taking their direct orders, so much as acting on Mr. Trump’s general instructions, with the president’s executive orders as his framework, according to people in his orbit, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s inner workings.
James McHenry, who served as interim attorney general before Pam Bondi was sworn in to run the department on Wednesday, initiated the firing of more than a dozen career prosecutors who worked under the special counsel Jack Smith. Their prosecution of Mr. Trump, he added, suggested they could not faithfully enact the president’s agenda.