Trump weighs in on if JD Vance will succeed him as president

(CNN) — On January 6, 2021, Emil Bove sat in lower Manhattan, watching on television as a pro-Trump mob invaded the US Capitol, violently attacking police and temporarily causing Congress to suspend its certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Bove at the time helped to lead the counterterrorism section in the US attorney’s office for New York’s southern district, and he was instrumental in helping agents try to track down dozens of Capitol riot suspects, according to two former US law enforcement officials involved in the investigation.

Four years later, Bove is helping to lead a new Justice Department effort called the Weaponization Working Group that is tasked with examining current and former prosecutors and FBI employees. According to a memo Bove wrote, the FBI “actively participated in what President Trump appropriately described as ‘a grave national injustice’” by investigating the January 6 US Capitol riot.

By that description, Bove should be among those whose work is under review.

Instead he’s one of several former personal attorneys for President Donald Trump who are taking the helm of the Justice Department. Bove, who left the US attorney’s office in late 2021 to become a member of Trump’s criminal defense team, has been tapped to serve as principal associate deputy attorney general.

Bove is not the only one among DOJ’s new leadership with a professional history that intersects with January 6 or Trump’s criminal defense – who are now involved in efforts to purge the department of officials and FBI agents who worked on criminal cases related to Trump and to investigate state-level prosecutors who brought cases against him.

Todd Blanche, Trump’s pick for deputy attorney general, defended the president in three of his four criminal cases. And John Sauer, who won the presidential immunity case at the Supreme Court, was chosen for the role of solicitor general.

And while Attorney General Pam Bondi never represented Trump in court, she defended the president during his first Senate impeachment trial and was one of a number of pro-Trump lawyers who signed on to an amicus brief with the federal appeals court on the Trump classified documents case.

Legal experts told CNN that the senior officials may not be breaking any ethics rules that would require recusal. But launching investigations into those who tried to prosecute Trump – just months after defending him in those same cases – does create, at least, the appearance of a conflict of interest.

“There is a reason that the legal ethics codes and the conflict-of-interest rules don’t contemplate this specific scenario, and that is because this specific scenario could have never been imagined until it became our reality,” James Sample, a law professor at Hofstra University, told CNN.

The new DOJ leadership’s relationship with Trump is also causing tension inside the department. Trump’s criminal lawyers developed a deep-seated distrust of the Justice Department and its career officials during the years they spent defending the president in federal investigations, according to multiple sources familiar with their thinking.

His attorneys see all Justice Department employees as “deep state actors who present potential roadblocks” even if they have never had anything to do with a Trump case, one senior DOJ official told CNN. “They don’t even introduce themselves.”

A main concern now running through the Justice Department is that the new political leadership would investigate or prosecute people involved in the two federal cases brought by former special counsel Jack Smith. Sources told CNN that Trump’s lawyers seethed behind the scenes about special counsel lawyers, and their anger even eclipsed their frustration with lawyers who led state cases in Georgia and New York.

Among those whose work is under review is Jay Bratt, the former national security prosecutor who spearheaded the classified documents case even before Smith was appointed. Trump’s legal team believed Bratt – and former Attorney General Merrick Garland – didn’t afford the respect they should have to Trump as a former president, sources said. Garland insisted Trump be treated like any other criminal defendant.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment for this story. CNN also reached out to a lawyer for Bratt.

January 6 pardons and prosecutors

In the weeks since Trump took office, Bove has served as acting deputy attorney general – and his actions immediately invited criticism that the Justice Department was acting on Trump’s behest.

In a recent memo with the subject line “Terminations,” Bove ordered interim FBI leaders to fire eight senior employees and to provide lists of thousands of names of FBI agents, analysts and supervisors who worked on January 6 related cases. The FBI has complied with that request, which Bove later clarified is not aimed at perpetrating mass-firings.

Former colleagues say Bove served a prominent role in helping oversee dozens of Capitol riot prosecutions, at one point pushing for the New York FBI to take the lead on at least some of the cases.

“He was appalled at what was going on” at the US Capitol, according to a former SDNY prosecutor involved in the investigations, adding that Bove never expressed concern about pursuing January 6 cases. “It was exactly the opposite. Emil was all about leaning in to fully support the FBI’s efforts to investigate, locate and arrest the subjects in our area.”

Dozens of FBI employees in New York who worked in any role on January 6 cases have now had to supply their information and exactly what tasks they performed in those cases to Bove.

Those who worked with Bove at the time told CNN that they were surprised he is now the face of an effort to review those same cases for improper conduct.

Chris O’Leary, former assistant special agent in charge of the FBI New York joint terrorism task force, told CNN in a telephone interview that Bove was “intimately aware and involved in the cases we were doing” and that “at no point did he express any concern.”

O’Leary added that he would think Bove “would be one of the people who would stand up and defend the work that was done.”

Bove has shown no public sign of recusing from the dismissal of FBI officials. Neither had acting Attorney General James McHenry, who ordered the dismissal of more than dozen officials who worked on the criminal investigations into Trump.

CNN reached out to a spokesperson for Bove for comment.

Interim US attorney and January 6

Ed Martin, the interim US attorney in Washington, DC, and former activist in the Stop the Steal group that pushed Trump’s false vote fraud claims, also has not recused himself from January 6-related probes despite being listed as an attorney for several defendants. He has launched a “special project” looking into how prosecutors used an obstruction charge against some rioters that were ultimately tossed because of a Supreme Court decision last summer.

Martin nodded to questions about a possible a conflict of interest in representing a January 6 defendant and then dismissing the case now as the top prosecutor – a move for which he is now the subject of a bar complaint.

In an email to the DC US Attorney’s Office days later, Martin explained his actions, writing, “over 18 months ago (at least), I stopped all involvement in the cases and was under the impression that I was off the cases. I understand the cases were also closed some time in the past.”

A spokesperson for Martin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some Justice Department rules around recusal are specific, making clear that attorneys should recuse from cases that may affect their financial interests. But the rules governing impartiality are more opaque, saying only that attorneys “may have to” recuse themselves if a case involves “someone with whom you have a personal or business relationship is a party or represents a party to the matter,” including a former employer or client, even if you are no longer being paid.

“Whether one categorizes it as a formal ethical violation or as an astounding abuse of discretion and a betrayal of traditional norms, the optics are not good,” Sample said. “The question with optics these days becomes does anyone who can do anything about it care? And, if so, what can they really do?”

Trump hasn’t been a fan of recusals

In the Trump administration, the very word “recusal” has a tortured history. Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the DOJ’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia. Trump unsuccessfully pushed for Sessions to “unrecuse,” and never forgave Sessions for failing to protect him.

In the current administration, the prospect of facing recusal decisions isn’t a surprise. Trump transition officials discussed the issue in the months after the president’s November victory, according to people familiar with the discussions.

In some ways, the prosecutors being appointed by Trump to run the Justice Department see little daylight between having represented him as a criminal defendant and representing his wishes as president, according to people familiar with their approach. If a conflict did arise where officials’ decisions would encroach on cases involving Trump as a defendant, the president could agree to waive that conflict and any client confidentiality privilege.

Meanwhile, Trump allies, including another former attorney of his, Tim Parlatore, say that the distrust between the new political leaders and the career workforce is “healthy.”

“For far too many years, we have had this revolving door of people who come in and out of the Justice Department … and because of their own personal histories inside the building they enter it with the ideological love and trust of the department that prevents them from really looking at things with a critical eye,” Parlatore said.

“If you have the same revolving door of people that go in and out – they won’t change anything – because they are part of the system,” he said. “The fact that you have people going in there – that might have a jaded view, their trust in the department has been broken, that is a good thing.”

CNN’s John Miller contributed to this report.

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