Donald Trump’s controversial pick for a lifetime judge appointment, Emil Bove was strikingly normal — until he fell under the president’s spell, a journalist noted Wednesday.

The Atlantic writer Quinta Jurecic was referencing Emil Bove, who was confirmed by the Senate Tuesday.

“The newest member of the Third Circuit does not appear to have been an ideologue; instead, his resume suggests an ambitious lawyer who was looking to get ahead,” she wrote.

“When he had a chance to distinguish himself by pushing hard on investigating January 6, he did that. When the winds changed, he changed with them. What is striking about Bove is just how normal he once was, and how normal his path to the bench may soon come to seem.”

Now serving a lifetime appointment on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Bove’s legal career prior to Trump’s second term was largely unremarkable; he served as an assistant United States attorney from 2012 to 2021, prosecuting cases related to terrorism and international narcotics. He even worked on identifying participants in the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol before resigning at the tail end of 2021.

Bove would then go on to join Trump’s defense team alongside now-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to fight off felony charges filed against the president in New York, and later, after getting tapped by Trump to a leadership position with his Justice Department, his behavior took a sharp turn.

“On January 31, when Bove fired attorneys involved in prosecuting January 6 defendants, he quoted Trump’s assertion that the lawyers’ work constituted a ‘grave national injustice,’” Jurecic wrote.

“The choice of language was particularly striking because Bove himself, as NBC News would soon report, had pushed aggressively during his first stint at the DOJ to be involved in investigating the insurrection. This hypocrisy did not seem to trouble him.”

Jurecic goes on to chronicle Bove’s path to “establish himself as Trump’s hatchet man,” where he went on to shut down the prosecution into New York City Mayor Eric Adams for his “assistance with immigration roundups,” and was promptly rewarded by Trump with his nomination to a lifetime seat on the bench.

“Whatever approach Bove takes from here, his path so far has demonstrated that total sycophancy to the president can be a fantastic career move for ambitious lawyers – especially those for whom other avenues of success might not be forthcoming,” Jerecic wrote.