A leading federal judge closely aligned with Donald Trump is facing a potential ethics-violation probe after attending one of the president’s rallies.
Emil Bove III, nominated by Trump to a lifetime position on a federal appeals court, attended Tuesday’s event in Pennsylvania to watch Trump deliver a speech that frequently looked more like a full-blown MAGA rally, complete with unhinged rhetoric from the president.
The watchdog organization Fix the Court filed a complaint Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where Bove sits, arguing that his appearance at the rally violated rules prohibiting federal judges from engaging in “political activity.”
“Last night’s event in Pennsylvania—prominent conservative voices are calling it a ‘rally,’ so that’s what I will call it here—was a far cry from the State of the Union or a state dinner, given its abject partisanship,” Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, wrote in the complaint. “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.”
If the “judicial conduct or disability” complaint is upheld after an investigation, Bove could face consequences such as being barred from receiving new case assignments for a period of time, The New York Times reported.
Bove, once a criminal defense attorney for Trump, was spotted at the Mount Pocono rally by MS Now’s senior White House correspondent, Vaughn Hillyard, who noted on X that the judge’s appearance was an “unusual move” for a federal judge. Off camera, Bove defended himself, saying he was there “as a citizen coming to watch the president speak.”
However, the complaint lists multiple examples showing that Tuesday’s event—which was supposed to give Trump an opportunity to try to convince Americans that the economy is thriving and that there is no cost-of-living crisis—was unmistakably a campaign-style rally.
Examples include Trump attacking “the radical left” in the first 90 seconds, repeating the false claim that he won the 2020 election, and musing about running for an unconstitutional third term.
Trump also attacked former President Biden as a “son of a b---h” and launched into a deranged rant targeting Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, her home country of Somalia, and other so-called “s--thole” nations.
“The Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges is fairly clear here. Canon 2 states that a judge ‘should avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.’ Attending a Trump event—and not leaving when it became clear that the speech was, in fact, a partisan rally—violates this canon,” Roth wrote.
Edward Whelan, a former law clerk to the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, questioned how Bove could “possibly think it appropriate” to attend the Trump event in Pennsylvania.
“You can argue about whether the rules clearly prohibit what he did, but he showed terrible judgment,” Whelan told the Times.
