AVDD Press Round Up
29 July 2025
Whistleblower evidence suggests Trump judicial nominee Emil Bove misled Senate; Washington Post, 28 July 2025
Key Points:
A new whistleblower has come forward to challenge the federal judicial nomination of Emil Bove, sharing evidence with lawmakers suggesting the controversial former attorney for Donald Trump and current top Justice Department official misled lawmakers during his confirmation hearing last month.
The whistleblower–whose existence has not been previously reported–presented documentation that contradicts claims Bove made before the Senate Judiciary Committee about a Justice Department prosecution.
Trump formally nominated Bove for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in June and a full Senate vote is expected this week–a faster timeline than most other judicial nominations.
The information follows revelations from two other Justice Department whistleblowers who have said that Bove told subordinates in a meeting in March that they may need to ignore court orders that would hamper Trumps’s campaign to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
Trump seeks quick Murdoch deposition in Wall Street Journal lawsuit over Epstein story; AP, 28 July 2025
Key Points:
President Trump is asking a federal court in Florida to force Rupert Murdoch to give a deposition for the president’s lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal within 15 days citing the media mogul’s age and physical condition.
Trump sued the Journal, owned by Murdoch, in the U.S. District Court of southern Florida on July 18 for its story reporting on the Republican president’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and alleged child sex trafficker who died in a New York jail in 2019 before trial.
The president’s motion to the court on Monday noted that Murdoch is 94 years old, is believed to have suffered several health scares in recent years. “Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,” Trump’s request to the court said.
Trump administration files misconduct complaint against prominent judge Boasberg; Reuters, 29 July 2025
Key Points:
The U.S. Justice Department on Monday said it filed a misconduct complaint against Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a prominent judge in Washington D.C., who has drawn President Trump’s ire. The Justice Department’s complaint centers around a reported Boasberg comment that the Trump administration would trigger “a constitutional crisis.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the complaint in a post on X days after Boasberg said he might initiate disciplinary proceedings against Justice Department lawyers for their conduct in a lawsuit brought by Venezuelans challenging their removal to a Salvadorian prison in March.
The judge in April concluded the Trump administration appeared to have acted “in bad faith” when it hurriedly assembled three deportation flights on March 15 at the same time that he was conducting emergency court proceedings to assess the legality of the effort.
The Justice Department’s complaint focused on comments the conservative media outlet The Federalist this month reported that Boasberg made during a meeting of the judiciary’s top policymaking body in March that was attended by Chief U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, where Boasburg reportedly expressed his concern to Roberts and others that the Trump administration would disregard court rulings and trigger “a constitutional crisis.”
See also: Trump admin escalates its war with the courts–this time targeting Boasberg, Politico, 28 July 2025
Harvard Is Said to Be Open to Spending Up to $500 Million to Resolve Trump Dispute; The New York Times, 28 July 2025
Key Points:
Harvard University has signaled a willingness to meet the Trump administration’s demand to spend as much as $500 million to end its dispute with the White House as talks between the two sides intensify.
The sum sought by the government, which recently accused Harvard of civil rights violations, is more than twice as much as the $200 million fine that Columbia University said it would pay when it settled antisemitism claims with the White House last week. Neither Harvard nor the government has publicly detailed potential terms for a settlement and what allegations the money would be intended to resolve.
Although the two sides have made progress toward a deal, Harvard is also skeptical of Columbia’s agreement to allow an outside monitor to oversee its sweeping arrangement with the government. Harvard officials have signaled that such a requirement for their own settlement could be a redline as a potential infringement on the university’s academic freedom.
The MAGA Revolution Is Eating Its Own; Mona Charen, The Bulwark, 28 July 2025
Key Points:
After years of stoking conspiracy theories, Trump and his allies now find themselves unable to dispel one.
An authoritarian movement cannot demand acquiescence from a formerly liberty preserving populace for just any old reason. It has to be an emergency. And that’s what the pedophile fantasy has always provided. MAGA doesn’t tell its followers to vote for Republicans because the Democrats have the wrong prescriptions for the price of groceries or housing costs or education policy (though it may touch on those matters from time to time). No, the heart of the MAGA message is that Trump’s opponents are not just wrong but part of a vast conspiracy to commit pretty much the worst crime most people can imagine. That’s why the MAGA faithful fervently pray for mass arrests in which the guilty will at last be separated from the innocent–a kind of secular rapture.
The most cleansing outcome of this scandal would be for the MAGA faithful to be brought face-to-face with what lying, shameless lowlifes the people in the Trump crowd are. It would be a teachable moment if they were to see with their own eyes that the elaborate tales of pedophilia were all “boob bait for Bubba”; that it was all lies all the time. That, not pinning hopes on finding a smoking gun about Trump’s behavior, is the very best reason to release as many of the files as possible.
