Know your BFEE: John Roberts earned his Sgt. Pepper stripes as an Iran-Contra cover-up artiste.

[Octafish]

34. John Roberts had larger 2000 Florida recount role

Something for people who care about democracy to consider...

Roberts had larger 2000 recount role

Roberts had larger 2000 recount role The role of U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts in the 2000 election aftermath in Florida was larger than has been reported.

Roberts helped prepare the Supreme Court case.

By MARC CAPUTO
Miami Herald
July 28, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts played a broader behind-the-scenes role for the Republican camp in the aftermath of the 2000 election than previously reported — as legal consultant, lawsuit editor and prep coach for arguments before the nation’s highest court, according to the man who drafted him for the job.

Ted Cruz, a domestic policy advisor for President Bush and who is now Texas’ solicitor general, said Roberts was one of the first names he thought of while he and another attorney drafted the Republican legal dream team of litigation ’’lions’’ and ’’800-pound gorillas,’’ which ultimately consisted of 400 attorneys in Florida.

Until now, Gov. Jeb Bush and others involved in the election dispute could recall almost nothing of Roberts’ role, except for a half-hour meeting the governor had with Roberts. Cruz said Roberts was in Tallahassee helping the Bush camp for ’’a week to 10 days,’’ and that his help was important, though Cruz said it is difficult to remember specifics five years after the sleep-depriving frenetic pace of the 2000 recount.

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’’He’s one of the best brief writers in the country. Just like a good journalist or a novelist, he can write with clarity, concisely and can paint a picture with words,’’ said Cruz. Roberts, a constitutional-law expert in a top Washington law firm at the time, is now a federal appeals court judge in D.C. Roberts was a no-brainer for the recount effort: His win-loss record at the U.S. Supreme Court was one of the most impressive. And, like Cruz, he was a member of a tight-knit circle of former clerks for the court’s chief justice, William Rehnquist — a group jokingly referred to as ``the cabal.’’
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Republicans such as Jeb Bush, though, say they’ve "moved on.’"

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http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7228

And the word came down from above that nobody was to say, "Squat."