Thursday, July 21, 2005
Roberts Gave Bush Advice in 2000 Recount.
from an article by Gary Fineout and Mary Ellen Klas
Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts provided legal advice to Gov. Jeb Bush in the weeks following the November 2000 election as part of the effort to make sure the governor's brother won the disputed presidential vote. He spent between 30 and 40 minutes talking to Bush in the governor's conference room according to sources.
Roberts, at the time a private attorney in Washington, D.C., came to Tallahassee to advise the state's Republican administration on the recount. Bush strategists were fearful that Gore's attorneys would try to subpoena the Certificate of Ascertainment (list of Electoral College members from Florida). This end game maneuver, which the Democrats never did attempt, might have blocked the state from sending the certificate to Congress and the National Archives in a timely fashion, voiding Florida's 25 electoral votes and making Gore the winner because he had garnered more electoral votes than George W. Bush in the rest of the country.
The reason that Roberts was tapped was his connection to Dean Colson, a lawyer with the Miami firm of Colson Hicks Eidson. Colson had been a clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist at the same time as Roberts in 1980 and was best man at Roberts' wedding. Brian Yablonski, who was then a top aide to the governor, worked at the Colson law firm before he went to work with Bush.
Incidentally, the ties between the firm where Roberts worked at the time, Hogan & Hartson, and Florida's government has grown deeper since the recount.
Roberts' perceived partisanship during the recount has been enough for some Democrats to suggest that his nomination should be rejected by the U.S. Senate.
US Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) said, "Judge Roberts worked to ensure that George Bush would become president regardless of what the courts might decide." (News accounts suggested that Roberts gave Jeb Bush advice on how the state legislature could name Bush the winner.) Wexler continued, "And now he is being rewarded for that partisan service by being appointed to the nation's highest court."
Wexler suggested it should be grounds for rejecting his nomination, because it "threw salt on the wounds of the thousands of Floridians whose voting rights were disenfranchised during the 2000 election".
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from an article by Gary Fineout and Mary Ellen Klas
Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts provided legal advice to Gov. Jeb Bush in the weeks following the November 2000 election as part of the effort to make sure the governor's brother won the disputed presidential vote. He spent between 30 and 40 minutes talking to Bush in the governor's conference room according to sources.
Roberts, at the time a private attorney in Washington, D.C., came to Tallahassee to advise the state's Republican administration on the recount. Bush strategists were fearful that Gore's attorneys would try to subpoena the Certificate of Ascertainment (list of Electoral College members from Florida). This end game maneuver, which the Democrats never did attempt, might have blocked the state from sending the certificate to Congress and the National Archives in a timely fashion, voiding Florida's 25 electoral votes and making Gore the winner because he had garnered more electoral votes than George W. Bush in the rest of the country.
The reason that Roberts was tapped was his connection to Dean Colson, a lawyer with the Miami firm of Colson Hicks Eidson. Colson had been a clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist at the same time as Roberts in 1980 and was best man at Roberts' wedding. Brian Yablonski, who was then a top aide to the governor, worked at the Colson law firm before he went to work with Bush.
Incidentally, the ties between the firm where Roberts worked at the time, Hogan & Hartson, and Florida's government has grown deeper since the recount.
Roberts' perceived partisanship during the recount has been enough for some Democrats to suggest that his nomination should be rejected by the U.S. Senate.
US Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) said, "Judge Roberts worked to ensure that George Bush would become president regardless of what the courts might decide." (News accounts suggested that Roberts gave Jeb Bush advice on how the state legislature could name Bush the winner.) Wexler continued, "And now he is being rewarded for that partisan service by being appointed to the nation's highest court."
Wexler suggested it should be grounds for rejecting his nomination, because it "threw salt on the wounds of the thousands of Floridians whose voting rights were disenfranchised during the 2000 election".
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