President Donald Trumpâs hand-picked enforcer tasked with leading a witch hunt against prosecutors and FBI agents who investigated the January 6 insurrection previously led his own legal crackdown on members of the pro-Trump mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Emil Bove, who was one of Trumpâs defense attorneys last year and was appointed by his former client as acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General last month, helped run a counterterrorism unit in the U.S. attorneyâs office in Manhattan that worked with the FBI to hunt down capitol insurrectionists, according to reports in NPR and NBC News.
âHe treated these cases as a priority,â Christopher OâLeary, a former FBI agent who participated in meetings with the Bove about tracking down Capitol riot suspects in the New York area, told NBC News.
âIn my daily interactions with him, there was never any indication of anything other than full-throated support.â
On Jan. 6, 2021âwhen Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol building in an effort to overturn Trumpâs loss to former President Joe Biden in the 2020 electionâBove was the co-head of the terrorism and international narcotics unit in the Manhattan attorneyâs office.
OâLeary and another unnamed official told NPR that Bove supervised his officeâs work on cases related to the attack. That saw him task prosecutors to work with the FBI on investigations and assist in efforts by law enforcement to obtain search warrants.
Boveâs position also meant he sat in on weekly Joint Terrorism Task Force meetings in New York, where he and others were regularly briefed on Jan. 6 investigations in the region.
Now, Bove has ironically been given a mandate from the president to purge the Justice Department and law enforcement of officials who were involved in Jan. 6 criminal cases.
Late last month, he fired eight senior FBI leaders and 17 prosecutors who worked on the cases. He also demanded the bureau hand over a list of employees involved in Jan. 6 investigationsâofficials ultimately complied, though two groups of FBI employees have filed lawsuits over Boveâs DOJ-led witch hunt.
âIâm really surprised and disappointed by his actions, how heâs pursuing FBI agents and employees who were conducting investigations in the same manner that they would have conducted any investigation,â OâLeary told NPR.
Bove is poised to become the deputy to his former law partner, Todd Blanche, who also represented Trump last year and has served as counsel for past members of the presidentâs entourage including Rudy Giuliani and Paul Manafort.
Blanche has been nominated for the deputy attorney general role, which Bove holds on an acting basis.
