Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee traded sharp accusations over the nomination of Emil Bovee to the U.S. Court of Appeals and related Department of Justice conduct, then moved forward to report several U.S. attorney nominations to the Senate floor.

The committee’s chairman, Senator Charles E. Grassley, opened the session by saying the committee would hold over three bills listed for the first time and that he planned to call votes at 10:30 if they had not already been taken. Grassley defended Bovee against what he called an orchestrated campaign of partisan attacks, saying his staff had reviewed whistleblower material and that "almost none of the material references Mister Bovee at all." He urged the body to "stick to the facts."

Why it matters: Democrats on the panel described a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct and demanded time to hear a whistleblower who they say has documentary evidence that Bovee suggested Department of Justice lawyers should tell federal courts "F U" when they issued orders the administration opposed. Committee Democrats argued those allegations and additional questions about Bovee’s role in DOJ decisions—particularly the handling of files and internal reviews connected to the Jeffrey Epstein matter and prosecutions arising from Jan. 6—warranted delaying a final vote until the whistleblower could testify under oath.

During the markup, Senator Richard J. Durbin pressed a series of concerns about Bovee’s record at DOJ, including an assertion that career prosecutors had raised complaints about his conduct and a request that the committee hear the whistleblower. Senator Cory Booker said the nomination process had been rushed and that "there are still unanswered questions surrounding this nominee," citing documents and requests for information the committee had not yet received. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse summarized the allegation at the center of Democrats' concerns: "Telling courts f u is not an attribute we want in someone seeking to be a judge," and he said the comment was corroborated by contemporaneous communications among DOJ lawyers.

Republican members defended proceeding. Senator Grassley said whistleblower records were provided to his staff and characterized the timing and handling of disclosures as raising concerns about process and motive. Several Republican senators, including Senator Rand Paul and Senator Josh Hawley, said they could not find documented, disqualifying evidence that Bovee had endorsed violence against law-enforcement officers or otherwise warranted delay, and pressed to continue with committee business.

Despite repeated Democratic motions to delay, to subpoena additional records, or to hear the whistleblower under oath, the committee moved to roll-call votes on a slate of U.S. attorney nominations. The clerk called the roll for multiple nominees and the transcript records the committee’s votes as favorably reported to the Senate with the recorded tally "the ayes are 12" on multiple ballots. The nominations identified in committee remarks and in subsequent roll calls included Kurt Wall, Kurt Almi (variant spellings in the record), Leslie Murphy, Janine Perrell (variant spellings in the record), and Eric Seiber (variant spellings in the record). The committee did not complete debating Bovee’s nomination before advancing the U.S. attorney nominees noted above; senators on both sides continued to dispute the propriety of moving ahead without hearing the additional testimony Democrats requested.

What the record shows and does not: Committee Democrats repeatedly asked the chair to take the time to hear a whistleblower described in the transcript as a 15-year career DOJ attorney who submitted texts, emails and other documents they said corroborate allegations about Bovee’s statements and conduct. Republican members and the chair said committee staff had reviewed materials and that the documents, in their view, did not substantively implicate Bovee. The transcript includes references to a DOJ memorandum dated July 7 that the majority characterized as finding no incriminating client list related to public statements about the Epstein files; Democrats challenged that conclusion and questioned internal DOJ decision-making and possible pressure on the FBI.

Votes at a glance: The committee record shows multiple nominations were favorably reported to the Senate floor during the same session. For several of those roll calls the transcript records the result as "the ayes are 12" and the clerk stated the nominations "will be favorably reported to the floor." The committee did not provide detailed vote-by-name tallies for every ballot in the parts of the record provided here, and some nominee spellings in the transcript are inconsistent. The committee transcript names the following nominations as having been reported favorably: Kurt Wall (U.S. attorney candidate), Kurt Almi (name appears with variant spellings in the record), Leslie Murphy (U.S. attorney candidate), Janine Perrell (name appears with variant spellings), and Eric Seiber (name appears with variant spellings). Specific individual roll-call vote-by-name tallies were not consistently recorded in the excerpted transcript.