Sen. Thom Tillis has said that support for the violent January 6 insurrection is a red line when it comes to considering nominees before the Judiciary Committee. On July 9, he told CNN:
The president should know if there’s anyone coming up for a nomination through any committee of my jurisdiction that excused January 6, that they’re not going to get confirmed in my remaining tenure in the U.S. Senate.
He specifically lambasted the violent insurrectionists who Donald Trump pardoned:
I still call those people who got pardoned by the president thugs. … There are about 200-300 people that should be behind bars now for what they did on Jan. 6.”
So you’d think Tillis would oppose Trump DOJ “enforcer” and Third Circuit nominee Emil Bove. Yet Tillis voted to advance him through the Judiciary Committee. He tried to defend his vote:
Does anybody really believe that if I was convinced Bove had made statements condoning violent acts against Capitol Police officers, that I'd be voting for him? The fact of the matter is, I can't find one piece of evidence where he said the violent acts were ok.
He can’t? How can that be?
Okay, maybe Bove wasn’t foolish enough to publicly say the exact words “the violent acts were okay.” But he has taken action after action that no one would take unless they thought the violent acts were okay.
For instance, as a senior Justice Department official early in the second Trump administration, Bove fired about two dozen January 6 prosecutors and demanded the names of all FBI employees involved in the investigation. Firing the men and women who tried to hold “the thugs” accountable under the law is just another way of saying “the violent acts were okay.”
In his memo ordering the firings, Bove said that Trump had “appropriately characterized the [prosecutions and investigations] as having involved a grave national injustice that’s been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years.” You don’t say that unless you think “the violent acts were okay.”
Bove had plenty of opportunities to condemn the violent insurrection at his confirmation hearing and in response to committee members’ written questions. Yet he didn’t. Asked point-blank if he denounced the insurrection, Bove only said that “the characterization of the events on January 6 is a matter of significant political debate.”
Bove also refused to directly answer the simple question of whether he supported Trump’s “full and unconditional pardon of January 6 rioters who violently assaulted law enforcement officers.”
Thom Tillis is no fool. Surely he knows from Bove’s words and actions that this nominee indisputably crossed the senator’s red line. But he voted for him nonetheless. Red lines only exist if you abide by them.