Emil Bove, nominee to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit, is sworn in before testifying during his June 25 confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who like Bove served as a defense lawyer for President Donald J. Trump, is at left.

President Donald J. Trump stated plainly what he expects from leaders of the U.S. Justice Department when he wailed, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” in response to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' fateful decision to recuse himself from the investigation of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Mr. Cohn, of course, was the notoriously unethical but relentless attorney whose career stretched from U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s depredations to Mr. Trump’s early years in his father’s real estate empire. Mr. Cohn, who has been described as a mentor of sorts to our current president, was disbarred in 1986 for attempting to defraud a dying client.

Emil Bove, a former prosecutor with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, has represented Mr. Trump more recently: He joined Todd Blanche — another SDNY veteran — in 2023 as part of the team that defended the once and future president in........

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