John Ashcroft

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John David Ashcroft (born May 9, 1942) is an American lawyer and former politician who served as the 79th US Attorney General (2001-2005) in the George W. Bush Administration.

Ashcroft later founded The Ashcroft Group, a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm, after being voted for two terms in succession (the first for a Republican candidate in the state) and as the 50th Governor of Missouri (1985–1993). Senator from Missouri (1995–2001).

He began working in Missouri state government and was mentored by John Danforth.

He has written several books on politics and ethics.

He has been on the board of directors for Academi (formerly Blackwater) since 2011 and is a professor at Regent University School of Law, a conservative Christian academy affiliated with televangelist Pat Robertson. Jay Ashcroft, his son, is also a politician, and he has been Secretary of State of Missouri since January, 2017.

Early life and education

Ashcroft was born in Chicago, Illinois, and the son of Grace P. (née Larsen) and James Robert Ashcroft. The family later lived in Willard, Missouri, where his father served as president of Evangel University (1958–63), and jointly as president of Central Bible College (1958–63). His mother, a homemaker, whose parents immigrated from Norway, was a homemaker. His paternal grandfather, who immigrated from Ireland, was an Irish immigrant.

In 1960, Ashcroft graduated from Hillcrest High School. He attended Yale University, where he was a member of the St. Elmo Society, graduating in 1964. He earned his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School (1967).

Ashcroft briefly taught Business Law and spent time as an administrator at Southwest Missouri State University after law school. He was not drafted during the Vietnam War because of six student draft deferrals and one occupational deferment as a result of his teaching career.

Personal life

Ashcroft is a member of the Assemblies of God. He is married to Janet E. Ashcroft and has three children with her. Jay Carter, Jay's son, is the Missouri Secretary of State.

Ashcroft had long adored inspiring music and singing. He made Truth: Volume One, Edition One, a Democrat, in the 1970s.

Ashcroft formed The Singing Senators, a quartet of U.S. senators Trent Lott, Larry Craig, and Jim Jeffords. The men appeared at social functions with other senators. In 1988, Ashcroft performed the Star Spangled Banner before a National Hockey League all-star game in St. Louis.

Ashcroft conceived "Let the Eagle Soar," a paean he performed at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in February 2002. Ashcroft has written and performed a number of other songs. According to John, he has assembled them on compilation tapes including In the Spirit of Life and Liberty and Gospel. Lessons from a Father to His Son, a book with author Gary Thomas in 1998.

Ashcroft was awarded an honorary doctorate before delivering the commencement address at Toccoa Falls College in 2018.

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Political career

Ashcroft ran for a congressional seat in southwest Missouri in 1972, barely defeating Gene Taylor. After the primary, Missouri Governor Kit Bond named Ashcroft to the office of State Auditor, which Bond had vacated when he took office.

Ashcroft was barely defeated for the appointment to the post by Jackson County Executive George W. Lehr in 1974. Ashcroft, who is not an accountant, has not been qualified to be the State Auditor, according to him.

Attorney General John Danforth, who was then in his second term, had hired Ashcroft as an assistant state attorney general. During his service, Ashcroft shared an office with Clarence Thomas, a potential Supreme Court justice. (In 2001, Thomas pretended to take Ashcroft's oath of office as the U.S. attorney general.)

Danforth was elected to the Senate in 1976, but Ashcroft was elected to replace him as the state attorney general. On December 27, 1976, he was sworn in. Ashcroft was re-elected with 64.5 percent of the vote in 1980, winning 96 of Missouri's 114 counties.

Ashcroft wrote the best amicus curiae brief in the United States Supreme Court's case, Sony Corp. of America vs. Universal City Studios, Inc., in 1983, supporting the use of video cassette recorders for time shifts of television programs.

Ashcroft was elected governor in 1984 and re-elected in 1988, becoming the first (and to date only) Republican in Missouri to serve in two consecutive terms.

In 1984, his foe was Democratic Lieutenant Governor Ken Rothman. Both sides of the debate were so negative that a reporter referred to it as "two alley cats [scrapping] over truth in advertising." Ashcroft's campaign ads highlighted the contrast between his rural-base and his urban-based opponents from St. Louis. On primary night, Democrats did not have a chance to finish in last place. Mel Carnahan, the defeated candidate, endorsed Rothman. Ashcroft won 56% of the vote and 106 counties, the first Republican gubernatorial win in Missouri history.

Ashcroft defeated his Democratic rival, Betty Cooper Hearnes, the wife of former Gov. Warren Hearnes, by a wide margin in 1988. In the general election, Ashcroft received 64% of the vote — the largest landslide for governor in Missouri history since the United States Civil War.

Ashcroft served as chairman of the National Governors Association (1991-92).

Ashcroft was elected to the Senate from Missouri in 1994, succeeding John Danforth, who resigned from his position. Ashcroft defeated Democratic congressman Alan Wheat 58% of the vote.

As Senator:

Ashcroft briefly considered running for president in 1998, but on January 5, 1999, he decided to re-elect his Senate seat in the 2000 election rather than running for president.

Ashcroft defeated Marc Perkel in the Republican primary. Ashcroft was up against Governor Mel Carnahan in the general election.

Carnahan died in an airline crash three weeks before the election in the midst of a close contest. Following the plane crash, Ashcroft suspended all campaigning. Carnahan's name remained on the ballot due to Missouri state election laws and the short time to go. Following Carnahan's death, Lieutenant Governor Roger B. Wilson became governor. Wilson said that if Carnahan be voted, he will appoint Jean Carnahan to act in her husband's position; Mrs. Carnahan said that, in keeping with her late husband's aspirations, she would serve in the Senate if voters chose her name. Ashcroft's campaign began again after this event.

Carnahan defeated the election by 51% to 49%. No one had ever won the Senate, though voters had on at least three occasions selected deceased candidates for the House of Representatives on at least three occasions. Ashcroft is the only United States citizen. Senator Bernie Sanders was disqualified for re-election by a dead person.

Following his Senatorial demise, Ashcroft was selected by president-elect George W. Bush in December 2000 for the position of US attorney general. He was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 58 to 42, with the majority of Democratic senators voting against him, citing his predecessor resistance to using forced busing to achieve deegregation and Ashcroft's opposition to abortion. He had been known to be a member of the Federalist Society at the time of his appointment.

The FBI announced in May 2001 that they had misplaced thousands of documents related to the Oklahoma City bombing investigation. Timothy McVeigh, a man who was sentenced to death for the bombing, was given a 30-day postponement of execution.

Ashcroft's first private jet became the sole airline to fly in July 2001. When asked about the decision, the Justice Department said that it had been suggested based on a "threat analysis" conducted by the FBI. Neither the Bureau nor the Justice Department would know the specifics of the attack, who made it, or when it occurred. There were no known threats against Cabinet members in the CIA. Ashcroft is the only Cabinet appointee who travels on a private jet, excluding the exceptions of Interior and Energy, which require chartered jets.

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Ashcroft, a key administration supporter of the passage of the USA Patriot Act following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, was a leading administration sponsor of the passage of the USA Patriot Act. Section 215 of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) grants the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) the ability to request an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to request the production of "any tangible thing" for an investigation. Citizens and professional organizations were concerned about privacy invasions. In two separate addresses delivered in September 2003, Ashcroft referred to the American Library Association's resistance to Section 215 as "hysteria." Although Attorney General Ashcroft denied that the FBI or any other law enforcement agency had used the Patriot Act to obtain library circulation or retail sales data. Ashcroft dismissed warnings of a imminent al-Qaida attack, according to his sworn testimony by two FBI agents questioned by the 9/11 Commission.

The partially nude female statue of the Spirit of Justice in the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, where Ashcroft held press conferences, was partially covered with blue curtains in January 2002. Department officials have long argued that the curtains were installed to raise the room's use as a television backdrop, and that Ashcroft had nothing to do with it. In June 2005, Ashcroft's replacement, Alberto Gonzales, took the curtains off. Daily prayer meetings were also held in Ashcroft.

President Bush's domestic intelligence service was illegal under Ashcroft's supervision in March 2004. He was hospitalized with acute gallstone pancreatitis a few days afterward. Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr. joined Ashcroft's bedside in the hospital's intensive-care unit to convince the incapacitated Attorney General to sign a pledge to reauthorize the scheme. Attorney General James Comey advised FBI Director Robert Mueller III of this scheme and rushed to the hospital, although they were unable to sign Gonzales and Cardozo, Jr. Ashcroft. President Bush's efforts to reauthorize the program were halted by him when Ashcroft, Comey, and Mueller threatened to resign.

One of the Torture memos was leaked to the public in June 2004, following reports of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. The Office of Legal Counsel, then-Mexico's chief, had already issued the Yoo memos and had warned companies not to depend on them. Attorney General Ashcroft released a one-paraphrased opinion re-authorizing torture after Goldsmith was forced to resign due to his reservations.

Ashcroft urged his US attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases. On the other hand, US attorneys were unable to locate any deliberate voter manipulation schemes, only finding individuals who made mistakes on forms or mistook them for eligible to vote.

Ashcroft resigned after Senate confirmed White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales as the next attorney general following George W. Bush's re-election. "The aim of securing the security of Americans from crime and terror has been met," Ashcroft wrote in his hand-written resignation letter, dated November 2.

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