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The gangster-turned-cop racing to save Chinatown’s underworld history | CNN

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The gangster-turned-cop racing to save Chinatown’s underworld history | CNN


New York
CNN
 — 

Armed with an iPhone, a microphone and a lifetime’s price of connections with former cops and criminals, Michael Moy is racing to seize a bit of New York Metropolis’s forgotten historical past.

Moy operates a YouTube Channel known as Chinatown Gang Tales, which he launched six months in the past. The channel options prolonged, unvarnished interviews with former gangsters who share tales of life as members of the youth gangs that terrorized New York’s Chinatowns within the Seventies, 80s and early 90s.

The movies lack skilled lighting and audio high quality, however their flaws are reminders that the channel is the fervour challenge of an beginner historian trying to seize a forgotten historical past with restricted instruments.

Moy, 53, just isn’t a journalist or videographer, however he’s uniquely positioned to assemble these tales – as a former cop and a former gang member.

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In retirement, Moy has leveraged his expertise on each side of the regulation to persuade former gangsters to talk on digital camera so they don’t take their tales with them to the grave. His purpose is to seize an oral historical past of those gangs that, taken as a complete, will paint an correct image of the period and clarify to future generations the perils and pitfalls of gang life.

“My mission is to protect historical past,” Moy advised CNN, “and possibly assist somebody alongside the best way.”

Moy was born in 1969 and spent the primary 5 years in a small condo on East Broadway, a brief stroll away from the historic coronary heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown. Eleven members of his household crammed right into a railroad-style unit on the highest flooring of a six-story constructing, with simply 4 beds. Most slept on bamboo mattresses on the bottom, from the place they might hear the chaos wrought by Chinatown’s gangs outdoors.

In 1972, when Moy was 3, there have been no less than 4 shootings in his neighborhood. Two occurred in July and August. One other two shootings, one in March and one other in November, rattled theaters on East Broadway. Every venue was simply steps away from Moy’s condo.

Moy’s mother and father feared for his or her son’s security. The violence was a priority, however additionally they apprehensive about experiences that older youngsters had been pressuring youthful youngsters into gangs, generally by pressure. So when Moy was 5, the household moved to Brooklyn and enrolled Moy in a college there, although he would nonetheless shuttle between his new borough and Chinatown, the place he’d be cared for by his prolonged household.

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“For a younger child, my age at the moment, I actually didn’t perceive how harmful and highly effective the gangs had been, and the grip that they’d on the group,” Moy stated.

Gang violence had plagued Chinatown in suits and begins because the Eighteen Nineties, when Chinese language-American benevolent societies and fraternal organizations known as tongs, set as much as help immigrants from China by authorized and unlawful means, went to battle for management over the neighborhood’s illicit economic system – working opium dens, playing halls and prostitution rings.

Two tongs, the On Leong and the Hip Sing, fought violently over territory and earnings. The battle ultimately subsided, however the tongs themselves by no means went away. Their leaders continued to amass energy and status in the neighborhood by way of professional and illegitimate enterprises. The brighter highlight that got here with success compelled the tongs to distance themselves from the stain of criminality, even when they’d no intention of giving up the income earned outdoors the regulation.

By the point Moy’s household moved to Brooklyn, the tongs had discovered a sublime answer to their downside: outsourcing the soiled work of rackets and safety to youth gangs. The association supplied the tongs a veneer of legitimacy and a few insulation from legal prosecution, even when everybody in the neighborhood knew the reality about who was in cost.

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By 1973, there have been about six teenage gangs in Chinatown comprised of almost 200 folks, The New York Occasions reported on the time.

Youngsters and younger males got weapons and roved the streets as enforcers. Weapons and unchecked energy had been left within the fingers of impressionable youths. The rise in violence that ensued was inevitable.

“The entire group was gripped by the worry of those gangs, however they wouldn’t discuss it in public,” Moy stated.

Transferring to Brooklyn gave Moy far from the hazard. Nonetheless, as he acquired older, Moy felt displaced from the Chinese language-American group, particularly at college. He was considered one of only a few American-born Chinese language college students, and he was picked on as a result of he regarded totally different.

“It was fairly traumatizing. I went by way of rather a lot so far as bullying,” Moy stated.

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Moy felt he had nowhere to show. Academics appeared both unable to acknowledge the extent of the bullying or unwilling to cope with it, he stated. His mother and father weren’t there to assist both; they had been at all times working and by no means residence. Moy solely made one good good friend at college in Brooklyn. They’d examine collectively, and after faculty, they’d play video video games or shoot pool at a smoky, dingy native pool corridor.

A dai ma – or recruiter – for a Chinese language gang noticed Moy, then a brief, skinny 16-year-old typically wearing outsized sweaters, and acknowledged instantly that he was weak, Moy stated. So, someday whereas Moy was strolling to the pool corridor, the dai ma approached him, providing the safety, respect and camaraderie he craved.

Moy was to spend the following 9 years as a member of a Chinese language-American gang.

Mike Moy in 1986.

Moy did have one Chinese language-American good friend who lived in his Brooklyn neighborhood. His title was Kenny Wong – and he too was to embrace gang life for a time.

Whereas Moy shared his story in an interview with CNN, Wong’s has been uploaded to YouTube. He is without doubt one of the most featured characters on Chinatown Gang Tales, Moy’s YouTube channel, and 1000’s of customers have watched him recount experiences from his life as a gangster.

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Wong, 53, typically talks in regards to the difficulties he confronted throughout his childhood. It’s an analogous story to Moy’s.

Wong lived in Chinatown as a boy. By way of the skinny partitions of the household’s condo, the Wongs might hear their next-door neighbors being robbed or junkies taking pictures up. Once they walked out into hallways, there have been typically folks handed out on the ground, Wong recalled.

Wong’s household, like Moy’s, moved to Brooklyn in search of refuge from the violence. However Wong’s father maintained ties to the Ghost Shadows, a infamous road gang with hyperlinks to the On Leong Tong and, within the early Nineteen Eighties, he was killed in a drive-by taking pictures.

Wong stated that his anger and drive for revenge motivated him to hitch the Ghost Shadows. After a number of years as a gangster, the regulation caught up with Wong. He was charged with racketeering in federal court docket within the early Nineties and spent about eight years behind bars.

In jail, Wong vowed to his household that he would depart his lifetime of crime behind as soon as he was out. By 2001, he was in Brooklyn making good on his promise and dealing in building, when he noticed a well-recognized face strolling down the road. It was Michael Moy, however – in an unlikely flip – he was now dressed within the navy blue uniform of a New York Metropolis police officer.

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Kenny Wong stands in front of the On Leong Association building, an organization he was associated with as a gang member in Manhattan's Chinatown, New York City, on December 17. 

Wong used to be a member of Chinatown's Ghost Shadow gang from 1984 to 1993, until he was arrested and sent to prison. Wong says it was

At first, gang membership had supplied Moy the safety he sought and the close-knit group he lacked. The bullies who as soon as focused Moy not wished something to do with him. Life turned extra thrilling and extra adventurous, he stated.

“It was a rush,” Moy stated. “It gave me confidence. It gave me a way of being highly effective.”

Slowly, nevertheless, doubts crept in. Mates had been killed or despatched to jail, caught within the dragnet of federal investigators and prosecutors who had been going after Chinese language organized crime utilizing the identical instruments that helped them to deliver down the Italian mafia – primarily the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). RICO allowed the federal authorities to severely punish these convicted of taking part in a sample of crimes with a typical goal – basically, gang exercise.

Moy thought tougher about his personal future with every good friend who was killed or despatched to jail. However the main impetus for change got here from the story of Steven McDonald, a New York Metropolis police officer. Whereas on patrol in Central Park in 1986, McDonald was shot 3 times by a 15-year-old and left paralyzed from the neck down; docs believed he wouldn’t reside greater than one other 5 years.

Simply months later, McDonald publicly forgave the teenage boy who almost killed him. The officer turned a logo of compassion and charm, inspiring New Yorkers till his eventual loss of life in 2017.

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Moy learn in a newspaper article that McDonald believed {the teenager} who shot him was “a product of his setting.” Moy had by no means heard the phrase earlier than, and it sparked in him a deep, uncomfortable sense of self-reflection.

“I used to be a younger child then. I didn’t know what that meant,” Moy stated. “However I dissected each phrase, and tried to know what he meant by that. Then I checked out myself. Am I a product of my setting?”

Age and knowledge, mixed with McDonald’s instance, fueled in Moy a better sense of guilt about his actions. The extra he thought of his future, the extra Moy retreated from the on a regular basis lifetime of his gang.

“His phrases simply saved ringing in my ears. It was simply one thing whispering in my ear, you’re a product of your setting. It is advisable to get out,” Moy stated.

In January 1989, impressed to vary his life’s course, Moy took the NYPD’s Police Officer’s Entrance Examination. Moy remained concerned with the gang after that, he stated, although he “took a number of steps again,” till, within the mid-Nineties, he was invited to attend the police academy.

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When he graduated and left the neighborhood to grow to be a police officer, he advised nobody within the gang the place he was going. He merely disappeared from the legal underworld, severing the ties to his previous.

Moy was despatched to patrol a few of the identical streets he roamed as a gangster in Brooklyn’s Chinatown, into which his gang had expanded from Manhattan. Initially cautious of being acknowledged by his previous associates, Moy stated, his first day on the job reassured him. As anticipated, Moy handed some gangsters who knew him however his presence was solely silently acknowledged.

“That eased my fears, my anxiousness,” Moy stated.

Mike Moy spent more than 20 years with the New York City Police Department.

Moy’s profession on the NYPD lasted about 1 / 4 century. He spent 9 years as an officer and 16 as a detective, most of it assigned to a precinct in south Brooklyn. The concept that would grow to be Moy’s YouTube channel began to take form close to the tip of his profession, when he started watching movies of different former New York gangsters.

He was shocked to see former members of different New York gangs talking so freely about their experiences within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties. There have been onetime Italian mobsters, Hispanic gangsters and members of Black organized crime teams, however not Asians. Moy thought to himself: “Why not us?”

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“There’s quite a lot of misinformation on the market, and nobody from that period – no New York Metropolis Chinatown gang member from that period – ever got here out and spoke about their experiences. None by any means,” Moy stated.

The push to lastly begin the challenge got here from a tragic reminder of his personal mortality in 2015. Moy and a number of other of his colleagues had been first responders to the 9/11 terror assaults in New York. Years later, they developed diseases associated to the tragedy. Moy’s diseases, which had been uncovered because of monitoring he acquired below the World Commerce Middle Well being Program, weren’t instantly life-threatening, however a few of his associates died from most cancers.

“That’s after I began saying, if I don’t do it now, when?” Moy recalled.

Moy performed his first interview the following yr, whereas nonetheless within the police, at first considering he would use them to complement a memoir. Slowly, over years, he compiled lots of of hours’ price of interviews. Moy estimates that he’s spent greater than $100,000 on the challenge, touring the world to interview former Asian or Asian-American gang members.

Moy’s profession on the NYPD got here to an unceremonious finish in 2021. He left the pressure after submitting a proper grievance with the Equal Employment Alternative Fee and suing the town of New York, alleging {that a} small group of fellow officers engaged in racist habits. Moy alleged that he was discriminated in opposition to because of his race after which subjected to retaliation after talking out.

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The NYPD on the time advised native media it “takes such allegations significantly and doesn’t tolerate discrimination of any form.” Authorities didn’t reply to an electronic mail from CNN in search of remark. The lawsuit continues to be ongoing.

Leaving the police pressure allowed Moy to rekindle friendships that for years he was compelled to place apart due to police pointers on associating with convicted criminals. And people talking with Moy – none of whom are recidivists, Moy stated – belief his steerage as a former police officer. He explains to them points like double jeopardy and statutes of limitation, he stated.

Jimmy Tsui, who goes by the nickname “Bighead,” didn’t want a lot convincing, Tsui advised CNN. Tsui is, together with Kenny Wong, a closely featured character on Chinatown Gang Tales. In his interviews, Tsui shares tales starting from Triad initiation rituals in Hong Kong to almost bleeding out after getting shot in New York Metropolis.

Jimmy

When he was approached by Moy two years in the past in regards to the challenge, he thought it was a good suggestion to teach youthful folks about Chinatown’s seedy historical past, now prior to now, Tsui stated.

Kenny Wong advised CNN he was extra reluctant to take part at first, however ultimately he was swayed by Moy’s mission to protect the previous to form a greater future.

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Moy began laying the groundwork for his YouTube channel a couple of yr in the past, after he stumbled upon a unique channel known as Forgotten Streets. It options brief movies on the historical past of Asian and Asian-American organized crime, however has no interviews with former gang members.

Since its launch in August 2020, Forgotten Streets has racked up greater than 2.7 million views. The movies had been effectively produced, Moy stated, however he seen a number of inaccuracies. He reached out to the creator and the 2 had a gathering, the place they struck a deal. The proprietor of Forgotten Streets would assist Moy with journalistic and technical features of his challenge, whereas Moy would assist him by providing perception as a former gang member.

Retirement has given Moy extra time to spend money on his challenge. On June 2, Moy introduced Chinatown Gang Tales on-line and, in a bit extra six months, the channel has attracted greater than 3,100 subscribers and 210,000-plus views, thanks partially to promotion from the Forgotten Streets channel.

With such fast development, Moy anticipated the feedback part of his movies to be affected by the vitriol and racism too typically encountered on-line, significantly in gentle of a wave of anti-Asian hate crimes that started on the outset of the Covid-19 panedmic.

The criticism to this point, nevertheless, has been principally in regards to the audio high quality. Moy jokes that he’s studying from his errors primarily based on feedback within the YouTube part.

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“I do not know what I’m doing. I’m simply hoping, ultimately, the interviews will get higher, the voice high quality might be higher,” Moy stated.

Moy’s unsure the place Chinatown Gang Tales goes subsequent. He stated he want to dig deeper into the tales of particular person characters like Wong and Tsui, and ultimately deliver the tales and people telling them collectively, maybe in a gaggle dialog.

“We’re not making an attempt to glamorize this gang life. These are simply information. And the actual fact is, there was violence, there was betrayal, there was sorrow,” Moy stated.

“For those who don’t protect historical past, you received’t have the ability to change lives.”

From left to right, Kenny Wong, Mike Moy and Jimmy
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Trump threatens to derail Washington Commanders' new stadium deal over team name

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Trump threatens to derail Washington Commanders' new stadium deal over team name

A view of the Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Stadium, defunct and currently under demolition, in Washington, D.C., on April 28, 2025. President Trump is threatening to intervene in a deal for a new stadium.

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President Trump is threatening to derail a plan to build a new stadium in Washington, D.C., for the Washington Commanders football team unless the team changes its name back to the previous name.

“The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should immediately change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. “There is a big clamoring for this.”

The football team dropped the longtime name in 2020 after many years of criticism that it was racist toward Indigenous people.

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Trump also called for the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to change their name back to the Cleveland Indians. That name change was announced in 2021.

“Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen,” Trump wrote, without offering evidence. “Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them.”

Suzan Harjo, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes who fought for decades to get the team’s name changed, told NPR in 2022 that the “R-word” was connected to racist attitudes that perpetuated “emotional and physical violence” against Native Americans. “When I was a girl, you barely could make it through your young life without getting attacked by a bunch of white people — whether they were boys or girls or men or women. And they would always go to that word,” she said.

In a later post, Trump threatened to scuttle the Commanders’ plans for a new stadium, which would move the team from its current location in Maryland back to the nation’s capital after renovating an antiquated stadium on federal property.

“I may put a restriction on them if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a stadium in Washington,” Trump wrote.

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Congress gave the city control over the site of the proposed new stadium last December, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in January. The D.C. Council is now considering a multibillion-dollar plan to redevelop the property for the team. It’s unclear how Trump could intervene with the project.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office said in an email that the mayor had no comment. The Commanders did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for comment. The Cleveland Guardians declined comment.

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Digested week: Tutting Trump and Maga fans send each other to Coventry | Emma Brockes

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Digested week: Tutting Trump and Maga fans send each other to Coventry | Emma Brockes

Monday

Rightwing American conspiracy theories often circle the drain of lurid abuse stories. So it was quite a twist this week to see the chickens of this particular rancid online conspiracy culture come home to roost in the form of Maga faithfuls turning on Donald Trump for what the US president now refers to as the “Jeffrey Epstein hoax”.

Epstein, a convicted child sex offender, killed himself in prison while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, and Trump’s conspiracy-hungry supporters are now accusing the president of a cover-up. Specifically enraging to Trump fans is his decision to tread water on releasing the “Epstein files”, FBI files supposedly containing the names of the banker’s “client list”, which, last month, Elon Musk suggested Trump himself may appear on.

Until very recently, the Trump administration had been happy to throw meat to the lions by suggesting it would release the files. But in recent weeks the president has dropped that promise and instead recommended that everyone “move on”. Meanwhile, the FBI issued a memo last week saying it did not have evidence that would justify interrogating further suspects.

Well. Can you imagine? Across the US, the deep-state-is-lying-to-us klaxons went off like tornado warnings and before you knew it, the Maga megaphone Laura Loomer was calling for the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to resign, the Trump ally Steve Bannon demanded the dissolution of federal law enforcement, and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, called the FBI memo a “cover-up”. Which brings us to the domino run of events this week: Trump coming out fighting against his followers, who he described on Truth Social as “weaklings” and “my PAST supporters”, who “have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker”. And a partial, 11th-hour climbdown when he ordered Bondi to release testimony from the Epstein grand jury. As Trump himself might say: beautiful.

Tuesday

What do tarantulas smell like? Not chocolates, apparently; a useful piece of information to have had at Cologne Bonn airport recently, where news was released this week of a smuggling attempt thwarted by customs officials tipped off by a “noticeable smell”.

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Or rather, the notable absence of a smell: officials inspecting a large haul of cake boxes noted they didn’t smell chocolatey, and on further inspection turned out to contain, not confectionery from Vietnam, as the customs paperwork promised, but – what are the chances? – 1,500 baby tarantulas in individual plastic vials.

Many of the tarantulas hadn’t survived the journey from Vietnam, which feels like the opener to a dark Pixar movie or the trigger for an odd conflation of responses: revulsion, fear and sympathy.

‘I had it cast in bronze, and see: not so small! It’s a big beautiful hand.’ Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/AFP/Getty Images

Wednesday

The 2025 Emmy nominations are in and with them, more importantly, the snubs. At the top of the list is Keira Knightley, overlooked for her role in the very patchy Netflix show Black Doves (notable detail: Sarah Lancashire’s bored face in the pilot), followed by Tina Fey’s also really quite bad Netflix show, The Four Seasons, overlooked in every category bar a single nomination for Colman Domingo.

Meanwhile, the parlousness of John Hamm’s suburban comedy drama, Your Friends & Neighbours, was recognised by Emmy voters with a nod for the theme music and nothing else. But while some media outlets pointed to Renée Zellweger being overlooked for her role in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – which found itself in the TV movie category since it went straight to streaming in the US – this wasn’t quite right. For a movie, show or performer to count as having been snubbed, voters must have approached it with reasonably high expectations in the first place.

Thursday

Crucial to Trump’s “Epstein hoax” about-face seems to be the existence of what, in a story broken by the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper described as a “bawdy” letter and cartoon, allegedly written by Trump to Epstein on the occasion of his 50th birthday and included in a special album compiled for Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell – names that fall like a fantasy dinner party list but where the object is to assemble the worst people in the world.

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It is the Journal’s attempt to describe Trump’s alleged cartoon-drawing skills that particularly arrests in this new twist: the president’s alleged sketch featured the naked silhouette of a woman in which, wrote the Journal, “a pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts,” (the choice of “denotes”, here, really raising the tone), and Trump’s “signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair”.

The message, meanwhile, allegedly read: “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.” And while Trump jumped on Truth Social to call the note a fake and threaten the Journal with legal action, the rest of us could only sit back and marvel at the way life mimics pulp fiction – or rather, Alice in Wonderland, in which the president’s difficulties aren’t authored by a bold defender of Truth, but by the man who arguably bears more responsibility for his rise than any other: Journal proprietor and sudden hero of the hour, Rupert Murdoch.

Friday

In a week of awkward missives, Pat Brennan has resigned from his post as a parish priest in Coventry and marked the occasion with what the Metro described as a “sassy poem”. In his blog, Humble Piety, the priest posted a verse entry entitled Not I Lord Surely!, in which he blasted parishioners for being, among other things, “unfriendly”, “disdainful”, “bored”, “gossiping” and “tutting for a living”, and nailed a rhyme scheme in which he paired “holier too” with “you know who”, and “Lord’s own seal” with “it can feel”. We can only hope this style of critique catches on.

‘I’m still thinking of cutting the ISA allowance, but don’t pass it on.’ Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA
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Senate panel to vote on federal judge nomination for Emil Bove, who defended Trump

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Senate panel to vote on federal judge nomination for Emil Bove, who defended Trump

Emil Bove, President Trump’s pick to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on June 25.

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An attorney tied to some of the most aggressive legal moves by the Justice Department this year is in line to get a promotion soon, if President Trump gets his way.

A Senate panel is preparing to vote Thursday to advance a life-tenured judicial nomination for Emil Bove. Bove, 44, previously served as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and defended Trump in a pair of criminal cases filed by the Justice Department.

The White House says Bove is an ideal nominee for an open seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Trump has posted on social media that Bove would “do anything else that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

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But Bove’s record in and outside the Justice Department has fueled opposition from 900 former DOJ lawyers who identify with both major political parties and a group of more than 75 retired state and federal court judges who fear his intense loyalty to the president would carry over onto the bench.

“The rule of law is really only as strong as the institutions that enforce it and then interpret it — chief among them the DOJ and the judiciary,” said Stacey Young, who leads Justice Connection, a group that helps Justice Department lawyers find ethics and legal advice. “And it would be disgraceful to elevate someone who’s degraded one of those institutions to a lifetime seat on the other.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is charging full steam ahead on the nomination, despite requests from Democrats to investigate claims made against Bove by a department whistleblower.

Erez Reuveni, a longtime DOJ lawyer fired this year for acknowledging the administration had mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, recently came forward with allegations that Bove told government lawyers they might need to disobey court orders. Reuveni produced text messages, emails and other documents to back up his claims.

At his confirmation hearing, Bove told lawmakers he was not an “enforcer” or a “henchman” for the president. He denied that he had ever told subordinates to violate a court order. But he said he did not recall telling DOJ lawyers in a meeting that they might have to tell judges “f*** you” if the courts tried to block the White House’s effort to roll out speedy deportations of migrants, as was alleged in the whistleblower complaint.

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That’s a red flag for former federal prosecutor David Laufman, who said Bove has taken a “wrecking ball” to the Justice Department this year by firing career prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on cases involving Trump and the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The volume and quality of the evidence contradicting his failure to recall tells us everything we need to know about his contempt for the judiciary, his contempt for longstanding department norms,” Laufman said.

Laufman added: “Were he confirmed, we have every reason to believe that Mr. Bove would rubber stamp whatever the administration seeks to do and contribute to a majority ruling in favor of the administration with consequences for the entire country.”

But Grassley said in a letter to Judiciary Committee Democrats this week that he was unpersuaded by the whistleblower allegations.

“Following a comprehensive review of the additional documents that you published following the hearing and discussed in the media, I do not believe that they substantiate any misconduct by Mr. Bove,” Grassley wrote.

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Grassley also has questioned why Reuveni’s complaint emerged on the eve of a confirmation hearing for Bove, raising the idea it might be a politically coordinated attack.

But Dana Gold, senior counsel at the Government Accountability Project, said she and other lawyers for Reuveni had been working for months, line by line, to navigate the whistleblower process and ethics considerations.

Of the timing, Gold said, “It had nothing to do with tanking Emil Bove’s nomination. It had to do with getting the truth out.”

Gold added: “We do think that the information is highly relevant to Emil Bove’s nomination, that’s clear. It’s really important in terms of how leadership within the Department of Justice has interpreted and asked career attorneys to pursue a political agenda over the rule of law.”

A DOJ spokesman called Bove “a highly qualified judicial nominee who has done incredible work at the Department of Justice to help protect civil rights, dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Make America Safe Again.”

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Michael Fragoso advanced scores of judicial nominations when he worked as a Republican Senate aide. Fragoso said all signs point to confirmation of Bove, along committee party lines.

“I don’t think Chairman Grassley would be calling the vote if he didn’t have the votes,” said Fragoso, who’s now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, and an attorney at Torridon Law PLLC.

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