Emil Bove III, acting deputy attorney general under Trump, faced backlash for seeking to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams, a demand two Southern District prosecutors resigned over. Bove criticized his former colleagues for lack of unified purpose within the executive branch. Initially prominent in the Southern District as a terrorism prosecutor, Bove’s career soured following procedural violations in cases he oversaw. His aggressive style led to tensions within the office and complaints over his treatment of defense attorneys. Now a key figure in Trump’s legal defense, he exemplifies a shift toward politicizing federal law enforcement, raising concerns over prosecutorial independence.
Last week, Emil Bove III, acting deputy attorney general, stood resolutely and solitary at the prosecution table within the federal courthouse in Manhattan, undertaking a task his former colleagues at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York refused to perform.
Mr. Bove, who oversees the Justice Department’s daily operations under President Trump, appeared to advocate for the dismissal of corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams—a mission so questionable that two prosecutors in the respected office, often referred to as the “Sovereign District of New York,” resigned rather than comply with his directives.
Following the hearing, he expressed his frustration with the office. “There are no separate sovereigns in this executive branch,” he stated, hinting that his former colleagues should consider resigning if they held differing views.
This incident marked the latest escalation in Mr. Bove’s complicated relationship with the Southern District, where he gained fame as a prominent terrorism prosecutor before departing in December 2021, after a case he managed fell apart due to procedural missteps by his team.
He subsequently became a pivotal member of Mr. Trump’s defense team, known for his relentless demeanor. Since joining the Justice Department, he has emerged as one of the nation’s most influential officials and the primary implementer of Mr. Trump’s demands for retaliation and unfettered control over federal law enforcement.
The fact that Mr. Bove, 44, has suppressed dissent within the Southern District highlights its significant role as a symbol of prosecutorial independence—and reflects Mr. Trump’s tumultuous relationship with the department since his initial term. However, Mr. Bove’s aggressive approach also underscores his own complicated history with an office that equipped him with the expertise and confidence to challenge its power and independence.
Conversations with over two dozen former colleagues, current department officials, and others—many of whom spoke anonymously due to concerns about repercussions—provide fresh insights about Mr. Bove’s nine years in the Southern District, a tumultuous chapter that shaped his career and foreshadowed his ongoing endeavor to align the Justice Department with the Trump administration’s agenda.
Jessica A. Roth, a former prosecutor in the Southern District, remarked that Mr. Bove’s confrontational tactics aimed at overriding his old office’s judgments seemed to threaten its historical independence.
“There’s an attitude of ‘It’s my way or the highway’ and no patience for disagreement, even when respectfully expressed,” said Ms. Roth, who currently teaches at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. “The belief that disagreement constitutes insubordination is significantly troubling.”
Ellen Blain, a former assistant U.S. attorney during Mr. Bove’s tenure, remarked that these actions indicate a perilous new standard, compelling career prosecutors “to wield the Justice Department’s influence to intimidate the president’s adversaries and reward his allies.”
A spokesperson for Mr. Bove did not provide a comment. Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, accused Mr. Bove’s previous colleagues of “leaking sensitive investigative information, mixed with lies,” to the media. In an attempt to turn the critique against the administration, he labeled it “an unacceptable weaponization of the criminal justice system.”
A Steady Rise
Mr. Bove’s ascent began on the lower rung of one of the most powerful U.S. attorney’s offices in the nation.
After graduating from the State University of New York at Albany in 2003, he pursued a position as a paralegal in the Southern District, well aware it was the epicenter of significant legal activity. To his surprise, he was offered a position in the securities unit.
He left in 2005 to attend Georgetown University Law School, following his strong performance, but always intended to return. After completing two federal clerkships and a tenure in a prestigious law firm, he was hired in 2012 by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney appointed during the Obama administration, as a prosecutor.
Mr. Bove played a crucial role in numerous high-profile investigations throughout the years, both as a line attorney and a supervisor, overseeing the indictment of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro on drug-trafficking accusations and securing the conviction of Cesar Sayoc, who was charged with sending pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and critics of Trump.
He amassed a record of convictions at trial and through guilty pleas, including one case involving a Hezbollah operative and another with an F.B.I. employee accused of acting as a Chinese agent. A highlight, as noted by former colleagues, was the successful prosecution of the individual responsible for detonating a pressure-cooker bomb in Manhattan, resulting in two life sentences.
He took great pride in his work on terrorism cases, keeping a capped pipe bomb from one of those cases on his desk as a keepsake, according to visitors to his office.
Veterans of the Southern District often claim they take their work seriously but not themselves. Particularly among younger attorneys, there is a culture of lighthearted banter and pranks, with roasts held when prosecutors leave the office.
However, Mr. Bove did not quite fit this mold, as former colleagues have noted. He could be approachable, possessed a dark sense of humor, and connected with colleagues who shared his passion for running and fitness. Nonetheless, he had a tough demeanor and could come off as uncomfortable or curt in interactions.
He was intensely proud of his contributions to the Southern District, undertaking his role with the same fervor he previously demonstrated as a standout lacrosse player in college.
Then came an incident that seemed to alter his perspective on the office moving forward.
In 2016, during an investigation into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s fundraising related to his 2013 campaign, an F.B.I. agent unexpectedly approached Mr. Bove’s wife, who served as a policy advisor to the mayor, requesting her communications records, according to individuals familiar with the situation.
(No wrongdoing was alleged on the part of Mr. Bove’s wife, and Mayor de Blasio faced no charges.)
Mr. Bove felt this approach, while not technically wrong, was overly aggressive and unnecessarily distressed his family. He indicated that he would have preferred to be informed in advance but would never have warned his wife beforehand.
His superiors contended that notifying him could have potentially jeopardized a sensitive political investigation.
His reaction was immediate and emotional. He contemplated resigning and was so troubled that he took several days off to regain his composure. This response did not sit well with some colleagues, who believed he had overreacted, as stated by sources.
While his assertiveness contributed to his success within the office, it also resulted in complications, leading to advisement to moderate his behavior.
According to accounts from numerous sources, he managed to improve, collaborating on a criminal case alongside Nicolas Roos and Danielle R. Sassoon, who recently resigned as interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District rather than endorse Mr. Bove’s directive to dismiss the Adams case.
At that time, both prosecutors recognized Mr. Bove’s contributions, according to insiders.
However, in March 2018, David E. Patton, then head of the federal public defenders’ office in New York, which serves thousands of low-income defendants, emailed Mr. Bove’s superiors to relay grievances from defense attorneys.
In the message, obtained by The New York Times, one attorney characterized Mr. Bove as vindictive, someone who misused his authority and was “impossible to work with.” Another referred to him as “completely reckless and out of control.”
One public defender from Mr. Patton’s office painted Mr. Bove as purely adversarial, inclined to define justice on his own terms.
While Mr. Patton did not specifically request any disciplinary measures against Mr. Bove, he expressed concern that “there will be many future problems.” Mr. Patton did not respond to a request for comment.
This complaint seemingly impeded Mr. Bove’s career advancement, delaying his promotion to assist in running the vital unit responsible for investigating terrorism and international narcotics trafficking.
Pursuing Jan. 6
Nonetheless, Mr. Bove sought to rectify these issues, and by October 2019, his standing had improved sufficiently that he was promoted to co-chief of the terrorism unit.
Tommy Cindric, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who collaborated closely with Mr. Bove, remarked: “Emil is a bulldog. He is an aggressive, intelligent, and obsessive prosecutor. To me, he possesses a moral compass—and that compass has always pointed true north.”
During the more than two years he led the unit, Mr. Bove oversaw many of his most significant terrorism and drug-related cases. However, his direct and occasionally domineering management style resurfaced, alienating certain subordinates, according to former colleagues.
It was his management of another high-profile international prosecution that ultimately undermined his position in the office irreparably—yet simultaneously paved his remarkable route to Mr. Trump and a much stronger role in federal law enforcement.
In 2020, defense attorneys accused prosecutors under Mr. Bove’s oversight of attempting to conceal exculpatory evidence in a case against Iranian banker Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad, who was convicted that March for attempting to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran. In July of that year, the judge vacated the conviction and dismissed the indictment after the government acknowledged that issues existed in how evidence had been presented to the defense.
In September, the judge released an opinion rebuking the Southern District for its mishandling of the case and criticized the office’s leadership for failing to “unequivocally condemn these prosecutors’ improper actions and communications.” In one instance, a prosecutor suggested to a colleague to “bury” a document within the records sent to the defense.
The judge ultimately concluded that while government mistakes and ethical lapses in the case were “widespread,” she did not find that “prosecutors intentionally withheld documents from the defense or purposefully misled the court.”
This incident was a significant embarrassment for the office.
Around this time, the leaders of the Southern District decided to demote Mr. Bove following an internal inquiry prompted by complaints about his management style, which had caused morale in his unit to decline, according to three individuals familiar with the situation. However, they retained him until the resolution of the Sadr matter to avoid the perception that anyone, including Mr. Bove, had acted improperly.
Then came a dramatic turn of events: the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.
Mr. Bove, in his new role at the Justice Department, pressured the F.B.I.’s interim leaders to disclose the names of personnel involved in the investigations related to January 6. While he has not publicly acknowledged any involvement in the subsequent enforcement actions, he was, in fact, an active participant, according to colleagues.
Mr. Bove observed the events from his office in Lower Manhattan and consistently reiterated his commitment to assisting federal prosecutors in Washington in any way possible, as reported by a former senior department official who worked directly with him.
Although the Southern District could only play a limited role, Mr. Bove collaborated with the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, expressed no hesitations about the investigation, and humorously urged a member of his team to return with an indictment of a rioter or not return to the office, according to that individual.
A Potential Conflict
By the end of 2021, Mr. Bove transitioned to a small but reputable firm in New Jersey.
Even there, he found it difficult to escape the gravitational influence of his previous office. In the summer of 2023, when he began representing a woman charged by the Southern District with extensive fraud, prosecutors requested his disqualification from the case.
They argued that Mr. Bove “may possess information he acquired” during his time at the Southern District, creating a conflict of interest that hindered his ability to provide his clients with undivided loyalty.
He contested this, claiming that his representation was ethically sound and that the woman could waive any potential conflict. Ultimately, she opted not to enter a waiver, necessitating his withdrawal from the case, which frustrated him.
In September 2023, Mr. Bove joined a law firm led by Todd Blanche, who also began his career as a paralegal in the Southern District and was then leading Mr. Trump’s defense. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Bove was incorporated into the Trump defense team.
He took on a broad role, serving as a tenacious counterpart to the more easygoing Mr. Blanche, willing to make overtly political assertions in court, occasionally to the judges’ chagrin.
During one hearing, Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump appointee managing the case regarding Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents post-term, rolled her eyes verbally when Mr. Bove lamented that it was obstructing Mr. Trump’s campaigning. His argument mirrored his justification for dropping the Adams case ahead of the 2025 mayoral election.
“Can we discuss the actual legal issues?” she inquired.
However, Mr. Trump appreciated his assertiveness. During the Manhattan criminal trial in 2024 related to a hush money payment, Mr. Trump rarely criticized Mr. Bove the way he did with his other attorneys during sometimes heated exchanges in a holding room, possibly because Mr. Bove held a secondary role to Mr. Blanche, as observed by individuals familiar with the situation.
The bond appears to run deeper. Mr. Bove has demonstrated a penchant for Mr. Trump’s confrontational style during disputes.
He criticized Ms. Sassoon, a respected prosecutor and member of the conservative Federalist Society, for “insubordination and blatant misconduct shown in how you and your office have approached this matter.”
He went even further in accusing the Biden-appointed former U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Damian Williams, of initiating the Adams investigation to advance his political career, providing no evidence to substantiate this claim.
Mr. Bove’s denouncement of the office, particularly towards Ms. Sassoon, surprised former colleagues who had hoped for a more measured demeanor he had exhibited a few years prior.
In fact, the email from the federal public defenders’ office outlining complaints about his conduct had affected him so profoundly that he displayed a copy of it in his office, reminding colleagues that it served as a corrective reminder of his earlier behavior.
Reporting was contributed by William K. Rashbaum, Alan Feuer, Matthew Goldstein and Devlin Barrett.