Trump move backfires as judges slam brakes on court packing plan: report

Donald Trump's decision to place one of his former personal lawyers on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals with a lifetime appointment is backfiring as judges postpone their own retirements to stop the president picking their replacements.

In May, Notre Dame Law Professor Derek T. Muller pointed to a slowing of bench retirements since Trump was re-elected, noting the "exceedingly slow pace of retirements in the second Trump administration, disproportionately low."

Over the weekend, former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou wrote in The Atlantic that the president might have been better served if he didn't bully GOP lawmakers to ignore the wealth of whistleblower complaints and accusations against Bove during his brief tenure at the Department of Justice under fellow Trump appointee Attorney General Pam Bondi.

According to Ballou, the spectacle of Bove being elevated to a key appeals court seat despite credible accusations about his ethics did not go unnoticed among other judges.

"By appointing Bove—whose only apparent loyalty is to his own ambition, not to any particular legal philosophy—the GOP might have limited its own ability to appoint judges in the future," he wrote. "This is because the president typically gets to appoint new judges only when old ones die, retire, or move into the quasi-retirement position of 'senior status.'

" And some judges, even conservative ones who would otherwise be happy to let a Republican president pick their replacement, are likely to delay their retirement rather than hand Trump the opportunity to make more Bove-style appointments."

Adding, "Bove is not the kind of lawyer that a traditionally conservative judge would want to be replaced by," he continued, "For judges who care about the rule of law, even very conservative ones, Bove’s conduct offers a reason to reconsider retirement. Senate Republicans should keep that in mind the next time Trump nominates someone like him to the federal bench."

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