# Emil Bove

Emil Joseph Bove III (/boʊˈveɪ/; born 1981 or 1982) is an American attorney who served as acting U.S. deputy attorney general from January 20, 2025 to March 6, 2025. He is a former assistant United States Attorney and was a member of Donald Trump's legal defense team.

## Early life and education

Bove is from Seneca Falls, New York. His father, Emil Bove Jr., is a retired assistant New York attorney general.
Bove graduated from Mynderse Academy as his class salutatorian. He attended the University at Albany, SUNY, where he was captain of the Albany Great Danes men's lacrosse team. Bove was named the America East Conference Male Scholar Athlete Award for 2002–2003. He graduated in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in public policy and economics summa cum laude. Bove earned his Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University School of Law in 2008.

## Legal career

After graduating from law school, Bove clerked for Richard J. Sullivan, then of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2008 and 2009 and for Richard C. Wesley of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2010.
Bove worked as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell before becoming an assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he served as the co-chief of the national security and international narcotics unit. While there, he led the unit's prosecutions of Nicolás Maduro, Cesar Sayoc, Tony Hernández, and Fabio Lobo. Bove left the office in 2022 to work in the private sector. He became a partner at Blanche Law, the law firm established by Todd Blanche. Donald Trump added Bove to his defense team in September 2023. Bove and Blanche represented Trump in his election obstruction case, classified documents case, and falsification of business records case.
After winning the 2024 United States presidential election, Trump announced that he would nominate Bove to serve as principal associate deputy attorney general.

### Acting Deputy Attorney General

As acting deputy attorney general, Bove managed day-to-day operations for the Department of Justice's workforce of over 110,000 employees while awaiting Senate confirmation of Todd Blanche as Deputy Attorney General.
On his second day in office, January 21, 2025, Bove instructed federal prosecutors to investigate local officials who declined to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
On January 31, 2025, as part of the ongoing purge of civil servants in the second Trump administration, Bove ordered the FBI to fire eight senior executives and compile a list of other employees involved in investigations stemming from the January 6 United States Capitol attack. The reaction within the FBI to Bove's order was intensely negative.
On February 5, 2025, Bove distributed a memo to the FBI workforce accusing bureau leadership of "insubordination" for refusing to identify Washington, D.C.-based agents who had overseen the January 6 investigation. When leadership declined to identify what Bove called the "core team", he expanded his directive to include all agents and employees who had participated in January 6-related matters. This broader mandate prompted significant opposition within the FBI, resulting in non-compliance discussions and legal challenges from both individual agents and the FBI Agents Association. His initiative to identify the alleged wrongdoers is called the Weaponization Working Group. In response, FBI employees filed two lawsuits on February 4 seeking to block the collection and potential dissemination of investigators' names.

#### Resignations

On February 10, 2025, Bove instructed federal prosecutors in New York City to dismiss without prejudice criminal charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams, because the "prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime" and "improperly interfered with Mayor Adams’ campaign in the [November] 2025 mayoral election", taking into account that charges were brought after "Adams criticized the prior Administration's immigration policies". Bove stated that dismissal was "authorized by the Attorney General", "without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based", and that Adams' case would be reevaluated after Adams' mayoral election.
On February 13, the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon, and five other Justice Department prosecutors opted to resign instead of dropping the case against Adams, as they disagreed with the purported bases for dropping the charges. Sassoon wrote in her resignation letter that Adams' attorneys had asked prosecutors for a quid pro quo of Adams helping enforce Trump's immigration policies in exchange for dismissal of the charges; Adams denied there was a deal. On February 13, Bove accused Sassoon of "insubordination and apparent misconduct". Bove also characterised the intended dismissal of Adams' case as "the policy of a duly elected President". Bove then gathered the remaining roughly two dozen public integrity division prosecutors, telling them that those who did not agree to sign the motion might be fired, while those who did sign might be promoted. Bove and two other prosecutors signed and filed the motion on February 14. Bove wrote Sassoon that she and other prosecutors would be investigated by the attorney general under Executive Order 14147, entitled "Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government," signed by Trump on the first day of his second term, and Bondi's February memo entitled "Restoring the Integrity and Credibility of the Department of Justice."

## Personal life

In 2012, Bove married Sarah Kwai Lin Samis.