Bove, who was nominated and confirmed as a judge this past summer, was previously a criminal defense attorney for Trump.
Emil Bove testifies during his Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing on June 25, 2025, in Washington, DC.Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images
A conservative United States federal judge was seen attending a political rally hosted by President Donald Trump this week, prompting a nonprofit watchdog group to file an ethics complaint against him.
Judge Emil Bove, who serves on the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, was nominated by Trump in June, and narrowly approved by a deeply divided Senate in a 50-49 vote the following month. Prior to his nomination, he was a criminal defense attorney for Trump and served briefly in the Department of Justice (DOJ).
On Tuesday night, Trump appeared in Pennsylvania in front of an audience of his supporters. Though his speech was meant to focus on the economy, he delved into multiple unrelated topics, at one point going on a racist tirade against Democratic members of Congress and insinuating that he may attempt to run for an illegal third term as president.
Bove — whose jurisdiction covers the Keystone State — was in attendance at the rally, and was confronted by MS NOW reporter Vaughn Hillyard, who asked what the federal judge was doing there. Bove remarked that he was “just here as a citizen coming to watch the president speak.”
Judge Emil Bove is at President Trump’s Pennsylvania event tonight—an unusual move for a federal judge.
When asked by MS NOW off camera why he is here, he responded: “Just here as a citizen coming to watch the president speak.” pic.twitter.com/xmLDt0pBRR
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) December 9, 2025
It is highly unorthodox for a sitting federal judge to attend political rallies of this nature. Indeed, Canon 5 of the United States Code of Conduct for federal judges states that members of the judiciary “should refrain from political activity.”
“A judge should not…attend or purchase a ticket for a dinner or other event sponsored by a political organization or candidate,” Part A, Section 3 of that canon states.
“A judge should not engage in any other political activity,” Part C stipulates.
On Wednesday, Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonprofit dedicated to enacting reforms to ensure fairness and transparency within the judiciary, filed a complaint regarding Bove’s presence at the rally to Third Circuit Court Chief Judge Michael Chagares.
Roth recognized that judges are human, and conceded that it would be impossible to prohibit them from some activities — including “attending an event at which a President is speaking.” But Bove’s actions went beyond that standard, he said in his complaint, as the rally in Pennsylvania “was a far cry from the State of the Union or a state dinner” based on the “abject partisanship” of the subject matter.