Trump wants his people calling the shots. And Bove has proved, above all, that he belongs to the president. The president has staffed the top leadership of the Justice Department with individuals whose chief qualification appears to be that they represented Mr. Trump as private lawyers. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, was one of Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers at his first impeachment trial. (Previously, she was the attorney general of Florida.) Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, represented Mr. Trump at his criminal trial in Manhattan. D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, was the lead counsel for Mr. Trump at the Supreme Court when he challenged his prosecution in Trump v. United States. Mr. Bove, who is now Mr. Blanche’s principal deputy in the Justice Department, was his partner in the defense of Mr. Trump in Manhattan. Just as Mr. Trump has put his onetime advocates at the pinnacle of American law enforcement, the nomination of Mr. Bove signals the president’s desire to embed his loyalists in the judicial branch. At the age of 44, Mr. Bove has never written anything of consequence or even, apparently, expressed any views on the central issues of constitutional law. That in itself is not unprecedented for a lower court nominee, but what does distinguish Mr. Bove is his record of hard-edge advocacy and loyalty to Mr. Trump. In his second term, Mr. Trump has made clear that he will evaluate incumbent and prospective judges solely on whether they will endorse his agenda, especially when it comes to tests of his authority on issues like immigration. In a social media post announcing the nomination, the president said Mr. Bove would “do anything else that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” His remarkable change of heart about the Federalist Society raises the question of whether Mr. Trump’s second-term judicial nominees will prize loyalty to him over the ideological priorities that meant so much to his supporters in his first term.
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