The confirmation hearing on Wednesday of the principal associate deputy attorney general of the United States, Emil Bove, to be elevated to the Third United States Appeals Circuit for a lifetime appointment promises to be a referendum on President Trump’s second-term refashioning of the Department of Justice.

Mr. Bove represented Mr. Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case alongside Todd Blanche, who is now deputy attorney general. Between Inauguration Day and March, when Mr. Blanche was confirmed and sworn in, Mr. Bove was acting deputy attorney general, and in that role moved forcefully to bring the justice department, long despised by Mr. Trump, to heel. 

Now, a day before Mr. Bove is scheduled to answer questions from lawmakers under oath, comes word from the New York Times of a whistleblower report filed by a former subordinate of Mr. Bove’s, Erez Reuveni. Mr. Reuveni, who was fired, alleges that Mr. Bove was part of a cabal at the DOJ who sought to defy court orders “through lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation.”

Mr. Reueveni, a veteran of 15 years at the DOJ, was representing the government in the deportation proceedings against a Salvadoran national, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Mr. Reuveni enraged Mr. Trump’s advisors when he averred in court that Washington erred in deporting Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. The lawyer was suspended and then terminated after the DOJ took the position that Mr. Abrego Garcia was not deported by mistake.

Mr. Reuveni alleges that Mr. Bove “stated that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘f— you,’” an attitude that left the prosecutor in a state of “disbelief.” Mr. Bove also allegedly refused to order that planes carrying migrants deported under the Alien Enemies Act be returned to America despite a court order ordering them to do so. Mr. Abrego Garcia has since been returned to America and charged with human trafficking.  

Messrs. Bove and Blanche, along with Attorney General Bondi, constitute the upper echelon of leaders at the DOJ. When he was acting deputy attorney general, Mr. Bove was tasked with spearheading the dismissal of criminal bribery charges against Mayor Adams.

That effort, while ultimately successful, sent shockwaves through the Southern District of New York, where Mr. Bove once served as an assistant United States attorney. The acting United States attorney at the time, Danielle Sassoon, refused to drop the case, and alleged that the DOJ had reached an improper quid-pro-quo whereby chargers were dropped in exchange for Mr. Adams’s cooperation with Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. 

Mr. Bove, whom the Wall Street Journal reckons has secured a reputation in some quarters as “a smashmouth partisan who wields the law as a weapon,” accused Ms. Sassoon of dereliction with respect to her duty to the Constitution. She was joined in her resignation by some eight prosecutors in both New York and the District of Columbia.

Mr. Bove was undaunted and argued for the dismissal himself in court before Judge Dale Ho, who, at the advice of a conservative legal sage, Paul Clement, decided to dismiss the charges against Mr. Adams “with prejudice,” meaning that they cannot be refiled. Judge Ho’s opinion reckoned, “Everything here smacks of a bargain,” a determination that appears to support Ms. Sassoon’s theory of the case. Mr. Bove contended that the charges, which the justice department’s critics said were much ado about nothing, amounted to election interference against a sitting mayor.  

The first stop for Mr. Bove on the road to a confirmation will be the Senate Judiciary Committee. The ranking Democrat on that body, Senator Whitehouse, has requested more information from the DOJ on the prosecution of Mr. Adams and says in a statement: “Emil Bove is a partisan MAGA crony who has weaponized the Department of Justice to serve the whims of President Trump.” 

Mr. Bove has also led efforts within the justice department to address what Mr. Trump and his supporters have called “lawfare” and “weaponization” within the department, which aggressively prosecuted January 6 protesters and also supported two criminal indictments of Mr. Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Mr. Bove leads the “Weaponization Working Group” convened by Ms. Bondi. The group is tasked with, among other responsibilities, investigating the “pursuit of improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions relating to events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

When Mr. Bove was at the SDNY, he assisted in the prosecution of some of those involved in the unrest at the Capitol. Once he joined Main Justice, though, he ordered the firing of some FBI agents involved in that effort and requested access to the names of thousands of others who worked on the Biden administration’s vast prosecution of the protesters, all of whom were pardoned or had their sentences commuted by Mr. Trump.

The appellate court to which Mr. Bove is nominated — 51 votes in the Senate will be required for confirmation — covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and America’s Virgin Islands. There are 53 Republicans in the Senate, not including the body’s president, Vice President Vance.