Trump Judicial Nominee Torched for Refusing to Answer Basic Questions

Emil Bove struggled to answer simple questions about his work at the Department of Justice during a hearing before the Senate Wednesday.

Last month, Donald Trump nominated Bove, his former attorney, for a lifetime appointment to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was left fuming that Bove couldn’t provide a single straight answer to a line of questioning about an alleged plan with former interim D.C. Attorney Ed Martin to launch a criminal investigation for the purpose of seizing Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas reduction funds.

“I’m not aware of such a ‘plan,’ but I did participate in the matter that you are referring to,” Bove replied when asked about his involvement. Whitehouse pressed him on his efforts to work with Martin, but Bove continued to dodge his questions.

“Senator, like many nominees before me who come to testify before this committee, and are at the same time simultaneously serving in the department … I’m not going to be able to comment on the specifics of matters like that,” Bove replied.

“My answer is limited to, ‘I participated in the matter,’” he said, adding that he could only confirm what had been publicly reported. He proceeded to answer all of his questions roughly the same way. Eventually, Whitehouse became exasperated.

“Do you see my point now?” Whitehouse asked Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley, who’d seemingly provided Bove with the cover to evade question after question.

“We have an individual who is here seeking confirmation to one of the highest judicial offices in the land. I am asking quite legitimate questions about potential misconduct in office. Some of it has nothing to do with the substance of pleadings but has to do with administrative matters, like seeking the removal of a criminal career chief prosecutor. Some of it has to do with administrative matters like case assignment. And the fact that I can’t get anything resembling a straight answer in the circumstances that we’re in right now, I think signals a really bad moment for this committee,” Whitehouse said.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal also criticized Bove’s invocation of a “so-called deliberative process privilege.”

“First, this committee and Congress have never accepted that kind of assertion as a basis to evade questioning in this kind of confirmation hearing, but I’d like to point out also that this witness has no right to evoke that privilege. It’s a privilege for the government of the United States to invoke,” Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal also pointed out that Bove was invoking the privilege “selectively.”

“When he wants to answer the question, no privilege. When he wants to avoid answering the question, he says he’s not at liberty to answer. We’ve never accepted that kind of tactic on the part of a witness,” Blumenthal said.

Fox News’s efforts to make Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani seem like a bad influence for New York City are only making him more appealing.

Following Mamdani’s shock win during Tuesday’s primary, conservatives and far-right influencers worked overtime to frame Mamdani as a “Marxist,” a “terrorist sympathizer,” and a “Muslim jihadist.”

But Fox News’s angle on the 33-year-old Queens lawmaker didn’t seem so bad. On Wednesday, the network aired a full screen of Mamdani’s “socialist promises,” including that he supports “no cost childcare” for city residents, wants to provide “baby baskets to newborns,” and plans on expanding New York City’s minimum wage to $30 per hour.

“Nothing says ‘radical’ like being able to eat and have a kid without needing to live in a tent,” responded one X user.

“Up next on Fox & Friends: Why cribs are Marxist and bibs are a gateway to full communism,” quipped another.

Mamdani’s campaign platform offers details on how the prospective mayor plans to implement his policies.

The campaign has argued that offering publicly funded childcare solutions within the city is critical to keeping New Yorkers in New York: “New Yorkers with children under 6 are leaving at double the rate of all others” due to the exorbitant cost of childcare in the city, according to the Mamdani campaign.

The program would offer free childcare “for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years,” the campaign specified.

And Mamdani said he intends to base his “baby basket” policy on “more than 90 similar programs around the world.” His official platform claimed the investment would cost less than $20 million and would provide new parents and guardians “with a collection of essential goods and resources, free of charge, including items like diapers, baby wipes, nursing pads, post-partum pads, swaddles, and books,” as well as a resource guide on the city’s newborn home visiting program that offers help with “breastfeeding, post-partum depression and more.”

Raising the minimum wage to $30 would be another goal for a potential Mamdani administration by 2030, which philosophically argued that “making the minimum wage shouldn’t mean living in poverty” and that poverty-level wages paid out by some of the world’s wealthiest corporations only end up costing the public more as social programs have to effectively “subsidize” these low-wage employers.

“When working people have more money in their pocket, the whole economy thrives,” the campaign pitched.

Reporting by Jennifer Griffin, Fox News’s chief national security correspondent, underscores that the effectiveness of Trump’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday remains unclear.

A classified early report by the Defense Intelligence Agency made headlines on Wednesday, with one source telling CNN the assessment suggests the strike set Iran’s nuclear program “back maybe a few months, tops.”

Such reporting put a damper on Trump’s grandiose claims that the U.S. had “completely and totally obliterated” its targets in “one of the most successful military strikes in history.” The White House recognized the DIA report’s existence, but told CNN it was “flat-out wrong.”

On Wednesday, Trump argued that the available intelligence report was “very inconclusive,” but at the same time went so far as to compare the strikes to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

You may be surprised to hear that, of those two claims, the “inconclusive” remark is, for the time being, more on the mark.

Citing a “source familiar with the classified DIA intelligence report,” Griffin wrote on X that the preliminary report was issued with “low confidence,” and is based on just a “day’s worth of intelligence” that was available as of 9 p.m. EDT the day after the bombing.

Reportedly, the assessment was not conducted in coordination with other U.S. intelligence agencies, and it notes that it will take “days to weeks to accumulate necessary data” to compile a full battle damage assessment.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was once again chasing leaks out of the Pentagon Wednesday, after a leaked intelligence report disputed Donald Trump’s claim that his strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities had “completely and fully obliterated” them.

At a NATO summit in The Hague Wednesday, Hegseth fumed at the media after multiple outlets reported on an early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that found Trump’s strike had only delayed Iran’s nuclear program by a few months.

“The instinct of CNN, the instinct of The New York Times, is to try to find a way to spin it for their own political reasons, to try to hurt President Trump or our country. They don’t care what the troops think, they don’t care what the world thinks, they want to spin it, to try and make him look bad, based on a leak,” Hegseth said.

“Of course, we’ve all seen plenty of leakers, and what do leakers do? They have agendas,” he continued. “And what do they do—do they share the whole information? Or just the part that they want to introduce?”

The Pentagon has descended into utter chaos under Hegseth, who reportedly spends half of his time investigating leaks, according to one former official who was fired as part of one of those investigations.

The secretary dismissed the report as “low assessment,” meaning there was low confidence in the data. Trump, who had also taken shots at the media over the report, said the intelligence had been “very inconclusive.”

Hegseth appeared furious at the suggestion that the strikes could’ve been anything other than a success, and went so far as to suggest that it would be impossible to actually determine the damage to nuclear enrichment facilities like Fordo, which is located deep inside of a mountain.

“So, if you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordo, you better get a big shovel, and go really deep. Because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated,” he told reporters Wednesday.

Hegseth announced that the Department of Defense would be coordinating on an investigation with the FBI to discover the mole, claiming that the report had been intended for “internal purposes, battle damage assessments.”

In response to a reporter seeking to demystify the status of Iranian oil sanctions under Trump, the president clarified little—instead opting to casually mention that he could have plundered Iran’s oil but opted not to.

Just days after Trump’s unilateral decision to bomb Iran in hopes of dealing a blow to its nuclear program, the president posted on Truth Social that “China can now continue to purchase Oil from Iran. Hopefully, they will be purchasing plenty from the U.S., also. It was my Great Honor to make this happen!”

Few were sure how to interpret the announcement, which seemed to many to suggest that Trump was lifting sanctions on Iran, thus departing from Washington’s long-standing policy against such trade and terminating the president’s “maximum pressure” campaign on the country.

A White House official sought to correct the record Tuesday evening, saying that Trump’s post did not indicate such an about-face. Per the Financial Times, the official said the U.S. stance remains that China and all countries should stick with U.S. oil “rather than import Iranian oil in violation of US sanctions.”

Trump’s Truth Social post, the official claimed, “was simply calling attention to the fact that, because of his decisive actions to obliterate Iran’s nuclear facilities and broker a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz”—a key shipping route for oil—“will not be impacted, which would have been devastating for China.”

At a press conference Tuesday morning, Trump was asked to clarify whether his Truth Social post had marked a reversal in his “maximum pressure campaign” on Iran. The president gave a response that was far from clear: “Look, they just had a war. The war was fought. They fought it bravely. I’m not giving up. They’re in the oil business. I mean, I could stop it, if I wanted. I could sell China the oil myself. I don’t want to do that. They’re going to need money to put that country back into shape. We want to see that happen.”

Trump then mused that the U.S. could have seized Iran’s oil, continuing, “If they’re going to sell oil, they’re going to sell oil. We’re not taking over the oil. We could’ve, you know? I used to say with Iraq, ‘Keep the oil.’ I could say it here too. We could’ve kept the oil.”

Indeed, going back to 2011, Donald Trump’s position on the Iraq War was that the U.S. should loot the country’s oil, which many observed would constitute a war crime.

Trump gave more noncommittal responses when asked about his current view on Russia’s war against Ukraine at Tuesday’s NATO Summit at The Hague.

“You once said that you would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. You later said you said that sarcastically,” said Austrian reporter Johannes Petrov.

“Of course I said that sarcastically,” Trump replied.

“But you’ve been in office for five months and five days, why have you not been able to end the Ukraine war?”

“Because it’s more difficult than people would have any idea. Vladimir Putin has been more difficult. Frankly, I had some problems with Zelenskiy, you may have read about them. And it’s been more difficult than other wars,” Trump said, before listing the various wars he’s had an easier time “ending.”

“Will the United States contribute any more money to Ukraine’s defense this year, to the $5 billion that allies are giving?” Trump was asked next.

“As far as money going, we’ll see what happens. There’s a lot of spirit. Look, Vladimir Putin really has to end that war. People are dying at levels that people haven’t seen before in a long time.”

Trump was then questioned by a Ukrainian BBC News reporter whose husband is currently on the front lines fighting against the Russian invasion. The president took a clear interest in this reporter, asking her a laundry list of questions about where she was from and where her husband was. She then pivoted to ask Trump about Patriot missiles.

“My question to you is whether or not the U.S. is ready to sell Patriot missiles to Ukraine. We know that Russia has been pounding Ukraine really heavily right now.”

“Are you living yourself now in Ukraine?” Trump asked.

“My husband is there … and me with the kids, I’m in Warsaw actually.”

“Is your husband a soldier, no?”

“He is.”

“He’s there now?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, that’s rough stuff, right?”

Trump eventually got to the question.

“So, let me just tell you, they do want to have the antimissile missiles, as they call them, the Patriots. And we’re gonna see if we can make some available, you know? They’re very hard to get; we need them too. We were supplying them to Israel, and they’re very effective. One-hundred-percent effective, hard to believe how effective,” he replied. “And they do want that more than any other thing.… I wish you a lot of luck; I can see it’s very upsetting to you. Say hello to your husband, OK?”

Trump finally seems to be realizing what the entire world knew months ago: Putin has no interest in ending the war on Ukraine, and the U.S. has much less leverage against him than Trump may have previously thought. Only time will tell if this minor change in tune will be enough to make a meaningful difference in Ukraine.

In the midst of celebrating a quick resolution to the Iran-Israel conflict, Donald Trump casually mentioned that the fighting could start up again “soon.”

“You just said that you believe the conflict with Israel and Iran is over. What makes you so confident it is, and what do you do if it isn’t?” a reporter prompted Wednesday at the NATO conference in The Hague.

Trump said he believed that the ceasefire was legitimate because he had “dealt with both” sides and knew that they were “both tired, exhausted.”

“They fought very, very hard and very viciously,” Trump explained—“and they were both satisfied to go home and get out.” But the president had a wildly alarming answer as to whether or not the bloody conflict could start up again.

“Can it start again? I guess someday it can, maybe it could start soon,” Trump said.

An early U.S. intelligence assessment leaked Tuesday determined that Trump’s airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear bases failed to destroy core components of the nation’s nuclear program.

The president’s attack, conducted Saturday without the express approval of Congress, damaged facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. But a battle damage assessment by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm determined that the missile barrage only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months, rather than the “years” that Trump had advertised, CNN reported.

The White House rejected the report, rebuffing the whistleblower as a “low-level loser,” though they still acknowledged that the report had been classified as “top secret.” On Wednesday, the administration had apparently thrown the U.S. intelligence out the window, siding instead with a narrative pushed by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission that the site of the attacks had “rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.”

The U.S. president’s messaging on the Iran-Israel conflict has been all over the place. On Monday, Trump told NBC News that he expected the ceasefire to last “forever,” and that he didn’t believe Israel and Iran would “ever be shooting at each other again.” That was before the two sides had come to a formal, mutual ceasefire agreement; hours after the ceasefire deadline had passed, the two nations continued lobbing missiles at one another.

At least 610 people have been killed in Iran since Israel first attacked on June 13, according to Iran’s health ministry. Approximately 107 people died on Monday alone, making it the deadliest single day of the conflict.

American military intelligence found that President Trump’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities failed to “completely and totally obliterate” the sites like Trump promised they did. Instead of admitting his folly, Trump cherry-picked an Israeli source that better fit his narrative.

On Tuesday, CNN reported that a battle damage assessment by the Pentagon found that the missile attacks only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months. A day later, the president pushed back by pointing to a report from the Israel Atomic Energy Commission that fully supported his rhetoric that his strikes on Iran were a complete and total success. 

“The devastating US strike on Fordo destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years,” the report said, directly contradicting the U.S. intelligence assessment. “This achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material.”

That the president of the United States is deferring to the intelligence of the country who’s begging us to keep funding their unprovoked war on Iran rather than our own, only to make himself look better, is deeply troubling. Trump was asked to clarify at Tuesday’s NATO Summit: Was the Pentagon’s own assessment totally wrong, and, actually, how successful were these strikes?

“Is the [U.S.] intelligence correct or is the intelligence wrong?” a reporter asked. 

“Well the intelligence was very inconclusive. The intelligence says ‘we don’t know, it could have been very severe.’ That’s what the intelligence says. So I guess that’s correct,” Trump said. “But I think … it was very severe; it was obliteration.… Iran said, ‘let’s stop this.’” 

It seems clear that the president’s strikes—which he expected to somehow neatly conclude Israel’s aggression towards Iran—missed their mark, only prolonging the conflict further. Now he’s scrambling, even trusting the word of the nation that dragged us into this over that of his own military leaders.    

Trump consigliere Stephen Miller contributed to the ongoing meltdown over Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary with a nod to what’s known as the “great replacement theory.”

Miller has long elevated the racist right-wing conspiracy theory, which posits that liberal elites are ushering in immigrants to replace native-born Americans and thereby make electoral gains. In 2019, The Guardian reported that Miller, in emails with a writer for the far-right site Breitbart, “promoted racist fears of demographic replacement of white people by non-whites.”

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that Miller reacted to news of the charismatic Democratic Socialist candidate’s swift and decisive victory—and broad appeal across a city long celebrated as a byword for immigration—by dusting off Old Reliable.

On Wednesday morning, Miller took to X, writing, “The commentary about NYC Democrats nominating an anarchist-socialist for Mayor omits one point: how unchecked migration fundamentally remade the NYC electorate. Democrats change politics by changing voters. That’s how you turn a city that defined US dominance into what it is now.”

In another post, Miller continued, “NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.”

Mamdani actually performed better than Andrew Cuomo with white voters, but more of this from Miller’s ilk is sure to come, as those across the MAGA world and commentariat continue to succumb to what some online observers have dubbed “Mamdani derangement syndrome”—a common manifestation of which is, apparently, plain bigotry.

Donald Trump compared his strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities to a war-ending nuclear attack, while his own government has given an early assessment that the mission wasn’t the success he’s claimed.

During a press conference Wednesday at the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump desperately defended his military strike in Iran, following the leak of an intelligence report from the Pentagon that said that the sites had not been completely destroyed.

“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use the example of Nagasaki. But that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war, this ended the war,” Trump said. “If we didn’t take that out, they would be fighting right now.”

While Trump may desire the grandeur of his own nuclear attack—he really should not, but obviously, it’s on his mind—it seems he may be a lot closer to former President George W. Bush’s infamous “mission accomplished” blunder.

Within hours of the strike on Iran, Trump claimed that U.S. forces had “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But an early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the attack had only delayed Iran’s nuclear program by a few months, according to multiple outlets.

When pressed on the report, Trump said the intelligence had been “very inconclusive,” but that because the report had said that “it could have been very severe,” he understood it to mean “obliteration.”

Just months ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon” when presenting the U.S. Annual Threat Assessment. Trump has repeatedly dismissed that finding, opting instead to believe Israeli intelligence. While speaking at The Hague, the president claimed that Israel’s nascent report would find that they had achieved “total obliteration.”