"Abject partisanship": Trump loyalist Bove hit with judicial misconduct complaint; Axios, December 11, 2025

Avery Lotz, Axios ; "Abject partisanship": Trump loyalist Bove hit with judicial misconduct complaint

"Emil Bove, a federal appeals court judge who previously served as President Trump's personal attorney, is accused of an ethics violation for attending the president's rally-style speechTuesday night. 

Why it matters: The complaint from a watchdog group alleges that Bove's presence at the event runs afoul of two clear pillars of judicial ethics: to avoid impropriety and political activity. It could result in disciplinary action.

• Bove's office told Axios he did not have a comment when reached Thursday. The White House directed Axios to a social media post from White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, who told a user questioning Bove's attendance to "Stop ... pearl-clutching."
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Driving the news: Fix the Court, a watchdog and advocacy group, alleged that Bove violated multiple sections of the governing Code of Conduct for U.S. judges in a judicial misconduct complaint filed Wednesday.

• "There is no prohibition, of course, against a federal judge attending an event at which a President is speaking," wrote Gabe Roth, the group's executive director, in the complaint addressed to Chief Judge Michael Chagares. 
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• However, the president's Pennsylvania event — billed as a celebration of his economic wins that turned into a campaign-style speech with attacks on the "radical left" — represented "a far cry from the State of the Union or a state dinner for its abject partisanship," Roth writes.
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• He argued it "should have been obvious to Judge Bove, either at the start of the rally or fairly close to it, that this was a highly charged, highly political event that no federal judge should have been within shouting distance of."
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• "Last night's event in Pennsylvania was barely distinguishable (i.e., only temporally) from a Trump rally in 2020 or 2024, both of which were obvious political activities," Roth wrote.
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The other side: Bove reportedly told a reporter from MS NOW at the event that he attended "just ... as a citizen coming to watch the president speak.""