Barbara Bush: Vice President: J. Danforth Quayle: Secretary of State: James A. Baker (1989–1992) Secretary of State: Lawrence Eagleburger (1992–1993) Secretary of Defense: Richard B. Cheney (1989–1993) Secretary of the Interior: Manuel Lujan (1989–1993) Attorney General: Richard L. Thornburgh (1989–1991) Attorney General: William P. Barr (1991–1993)
President Bush's Cabinet. The tradition of the Cabinet dates back to the beginnings of the Presidency itself. One of the principal purposes of the Cabinet (drawn from Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution) is to advise the President on any subject he may require relating to the duties of their respective offices.
Most of Bush's top staffers stayed on after the 2004 election, although Spellings joined the Cabinet as secretary of education and Gonzales replaced Ashcroft as attorney general. In early 2006, Card left the White House in the wake of the Dubai Ports World controversy and several botched White House initiatives, and he was replaced by Joshua ...
Dec 01, 2018 · The Attorney General Who Served Under Bush. December 1, 20183:00 PM ET. Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday. NPR's Scott Simon speaks with former attorney general Dick Thornburgh. He served under ...
Alberto GonzalesOfficial portrait, 200580th United States Attorney GeneralIn office February 3, 2005 – September 17, 2007PresidentGeorge W. Bush31 more rows
William BarrPresidentGeorge H. W. BushPreceded byDonald B. AyerSucceeded byGeorge J. Terwilliger IIIUnited States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel30 more rows
Janet RenoOfficial portrait, c. 1990s78th United States Attorney GeneralIn office March 12, 1993 – January 20, 2001PresidentBill Clinton16 more rows
2, 2001 – Feb 3, 2005: John Ashcroft, a Republican, was nominated and appointed by George W. Bush to be the 79th attorney general. He is a graduate of Yale University and also the University of Chicago, the latter of which is where he earned his law degree.
Term Limits. Of the 50 Attorneys General, 25 do not have a formal provision specifying the number of terms allowed. Of the 44 elected attorneys general, all serve four-year terms with the exception of Vermont, who serves a two-year term.
California Former Attorneys GeneralMatthew Rodriguez2021 – 2021Kamala D. Harris2010 – 2017Edmund G. Brown, Jr.2007 – 2011Bill Lockyer1999 – 2007Daniel E. Lungren1991 – 199929 more rows
The current Attorney General is Mr. Godfred Yeboah Dame. He was appointed by President Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo in 2021.
Merrick GarlandUnited States / Attorney generalMerrick Brian Garland is an American lawyer and jurist serving as the 86th United States attorney general since March 2021. He served as a circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1997 to 2021. Wikipedia
The Office of the Attorney General's thirteen Regional Offices help carry out the Attorney General's essential defensive, regulatory and affirmative justice functions in every part of New York State.
Jeff SessionsOfficial portrait, 201784th United States Attorney GeneralIn office February 9, 2017 – November 7, 2018PresidentDonald Trump33 more rows
Edmund Jennings RandolphOn September 26, 1789, Edmund Jennings Randolph was appointed the first Attorney General of the United States by President George Washington.
The Honourable David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, today announced the following appointment under the judicial application process established in 2016.Feb 7, 2022
Terrorism had emerged as an important national security issue in the Clinton administration, and it became one of the dominant issues of the Bush administration. In the late 1980s, Osama bin Laden had established al-Qaeda, a militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization that sought to overthrow Western-backed governments in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Pakistan. In response to Saudi Arabia's decision to begin hosting U.S. soldiers in 1991, al-Qaeda had begun a terrorist campaign against U.S. targets, orchestrating attacks such as the 1998 USS Cole bombing. During Bush's first months in office, U.S. intelligence organizations intercepted communications indicating that al-Qaeda was planning another attack on the United States, but foreign policy officials were unprepared for a major attack on the United States. Bush was briefed on al-Qaeda's activities, but focused on other foreign policy issues during his first months in office.
Rather than bringing the prisoners before domestic or international courts, Bush decided to set up a new system of military tribunals to try the prisoners. In order to avoid the restrictions of the United States Constitution, Bush held the prisoners at secret CIA prisons in various countries as well as at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Because the Guantanamo Bay camp is on territory that the U.S. technically leases from Cuba, individuals within the camp are not accorded the same constitutional protections that they would have on U.S. territory. Bush also decided that these " enemy combatants " were not entitled to all of the protections of the Geneva Conventions as they were not affiliated with sovereign states. In hopes of obtaining information from the prisoners, Bush allowed the use of " enhanced interrogation techniques " such as waterboarding. The treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a U.S. prison in Iraq, elicited widespread outrage after photos of prisoner abuse were made public.
After years of financial deregulation accelerating under the Bush administration, banks lent subprime mortgages to more and more home buyers, causing a housing bubble. Many of these banks also invested in credit default swaps and derivatives that were essentially bets on the soundness of these loans. In response to declining housing prices and fears of an impending recession, the Bush administration arranged passage of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. Falling home prices started threatening the financial viability of many institutions, leaving Bear Stearns, a prominent U.S.-based investment bank, on the brink of failure in March 2008. Recognizing the growing threat of a financial crisis, Bush allowed Treasury secretary Paulson to arrange for another bank, JPMorgan Chase, to take over most Bear Stearn's assets. Out of concern that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might also fail, the Bush administration put both institutions into conservatorship. Shortly afterwards, the administration learned that Lehman Brothers was on the verge of bankruptcy, but the administration ultimately declined to intervene on behalf of Lehman Brothers.
Bush v. Gore. George W. Bush 's tenure as the 43rd president of the United States from his first inauguration on January 20, 2001, and ended on January 20, 2009. Bush , a Republican from Texas, took office following a narrow victory over Democratic incumbent vice president Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election.
In December 2006, Bush dismissed eight United States attorneys. Though these attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, the large-scale mid-term dismissal was without precedent, and Bush faced accusations that he had dismissed the attorneys for purely political reasons. During the 2006 elections, several Republican officials complained that the U.S. attorneys had not sufficiently investigated voter fraud. With the encouragement of Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, Attorney General Gonzales dismissed eight U.S. attorneys who were considered insufficiently supportive of the administration's policies. Though Gonzales argued that the attorneys had been fired for performance reasons, publicly released documents showed that the attorneys were dismissed for political reasons. As a result of the dismissals and the subsequent congressional investigations, Rove and Gonzales both resigned. A 2008 report by the Justice Department inspector general found that the dismissals had been politically motivated, but no one was ever prosecuted in connection to the dismissals.
On his first day in office, President Bush reinstated the Mexico City policy, thereby blocking federal aid to foreign groups that offered assistance to women in obtaining abortions. Days later, he announced his commitment to channeling more federal aid to faith-based service organizations, despite the fears of critics that this would dissolve the traditional separation of church and state in the United States. To further this commitment, he created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to assist faith-based service organizations. In 2003, Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which banned intact dilation and extraction, an abortion procedure.
Outgoing President Bill Clinton and President-elect George W. Bush in the Oval Office on December 19, 2000. The oldest son of George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, George W. Bush emerged as a presidential contender in his own right with his victory in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election.
Attorney General Gonzales, in a confidential memorandum dated March 1, 2006, delegated authority to senior DOJ staff Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson to hire and dismiss political appointees and some civil service positions.
Sampson's replacement as the Attorney General's temporary chief of staff was U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Chuck Rosenberg. Rosenberg initiated a DOJ inquiry into possibly inappropriate political considerations in Monica Goodling's hiring practices for civil service staff. Civil service positions are not political appointments and must be made on a nonpartisan basis. In one example, Jeffrey A. Taylor, former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, tried to hire a new career prosecutor, Seth Adam Meinero, in the fall of 2006. Goodling judged Meinero too "liberal" and declined to approve the hire. Meinero, a Howard University law school graduate who had worked on civil rights cases at the Environmental Protection Agency, was serving as a special assistant prosecutor in Taylor's office. Taylor went around Goodling, and demanded Sampson's approval to make the hire. In another example, Goodling removed an attorney from her job at the Department of Justice because she was rumored to be a lesbian, and, further, blocked the attorney from getting other Justice Department jobs she was qualified for. Rules concerning hiring at the Justice department forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Kevin Ryan (R) Though described as "loyal to the Bush administration," he was allegedly fired for the possible controversy that negative job performance evaluations might cause if they were released. John McKay (R) Was given a positive job evaluation 7 months before he was fired.
Officials who resigned. Alberto Gonzales, United States Attorney General, former White House Counsel. Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to the Attorney General. Michael A. Battle, Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. Michael Elston, Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel stated that some of the emails that had involved official correspondence relating to the firing of attorneys may have been lost because they were conducted on Republican party accounts and not stored properly. "Some official e-mails have potentially been lost and that is a mistake the White House is aggressively working to correct." said Stanzel, a White House spokesman. Stonzel said that they could not rule out the possibility that some of the lost emails dealt with the firing of U.S. attorneys. For example, J. Scott Jennings, an aide to Karl Rove communicated with Justice Department officials "concerning the appointment of Tim Griffin, a former Rove aide, as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, according to e-mails released in March, 2007. For that exchange, Jennings, although working at the White House, used an e-mail account registered to the Republican National Committee, where Griffin had worked as a political opposition researcher."
The President of the United States has the authority to appoint U.S. Attorneys, with the consent of the United States Senate, and the President may remove U.S. Attorneys from office. In the event of a vacancy, the United States Attorney General is authorized to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney. Before March 9, 2006, such interim appointments expired after 120 days, if a Presidential appointment had not been approved by the Senate. Vacancies that persisted beyond 120 days were filled through interim appointments made by the Federal District Court for the district of the vacant office.
Members of Congress investigating the dismissals found that sworn testimony from Department of Justice officials appeared to be contradicted by internal Department memoranda and e-mail, and that possibly Congress was deliberately misled. The White House role in the dismissals remained unclear despite hours of testimony by Attorney General Gonzales and senior Department of Justice staff in congressional committee hearings.
As counsel to Governor Bush, Gonzales helped advise Bush in connection with jury duty when he was called in a 1996 Travis County drunk driving case. The case led to controversy during Bush's 2000 presidential campaign because Bush's answers to the potential juror questionnaire did not disclose Bush's own 1976 misdemeanor drunk driving conviction. Gonzales made no formal request for Bush to be excused from jury duty but raised a possible conflict of interest because as the Governor, Bush might be called upon to pardon the accused party. Gonzales's work in this case has been described as "canny lawyering".
By law, U.S. Attorneys are appointed for a term of four years, and each U.S. Attorney serves at the pleasure of the President and is subject to removal by the President for any reason, or no reason at all, barring only illegal and improper reasons. When Gonzales became Attorney General in 2005, he ordered a performance review of all U.S. Attorneys. On December 7, 2006, seven United States attorneys were notified by the United States Department of Justice that they were being dismissed, after the George W. Bush administration sought their resignation. One more, Bud Cummins, who had been informed of his dismissal in June 2006, announced his resignation on December 15, 2006, effective December 20, 2006, upon being notified of Tim Griffin 's appointment as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. In the subsequent congressional hearings and press reports, it was disclosed that additional U.S. attorneys were controversially dismissed without explanation to the dismissee in 2005 and 2006, and that at least 26 U.S. attorneys were at various times considered for dismissal.
Gonzales fought with Congress to keep Vice President Dick Cheney 's Energy Task Force documents from being reviewed. His arguments were ultimately upheld by courts. On July 2, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Vice President, but remanded the case back to the D.C. Circuit. On May 11, 2005, the D.C. Circuit threw out the lawsuit and ruled the Vice President was free to meet in private with energy industry representatives in 2001 while drawing up the President's energy policy.
On January 18, 2007, Gonzales was invited to speak to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he shocked the committee's ranking member, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, with statements regarding the right of habeas corpus in the United States Constitution. An excerpt of the exchange follows:
Alberto Gonzales. For other people named Alberto González, see Alberto González (disambiguation). Alberto R. Gonzales (born August 4, 1955) is an American lawyer who served as the 80th United States Attorney General, appointed in February 2005 by President George W. Bush, becoming the highest-ranking Hispanic American in executive government ...
On August 26, 2007, Gonzales submitted his resignation as Attorney General with an effective date of September 17, 2007. In a statement on August 27, Gonzales thanked the President for the opportunity to be of service to his country, giving no indication of either the reasons for his resignation or his future plans.
United States Air Force. Years of service. 1973–1975. Alberto R. Gonzales (born August 4, 1955) is an American lawyer who served as the 80th United States Attorney General, appointed in February 2005 by President George W. Bush, becoming the highest-ranking Hispanic American in executive government to date. He was the first Hispanic ...
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, whose state has been a plaintiff in dozens of cases against the Trump administration, said the White House adopted extreme positions that in her view flouted laws and required consistent action.
California's Democratic attorney general, Xavier Becerra, has been part of the most multistate lawsuits, according to Nolette's data.
Greg Zoeller, a Republican who was Indiana's attorney general from 2009 to 2017, said the "dysfunction of the legislative branch" was a big reason Obama pushed through executive orders and administrative rules of his own, which alarmed Republican attorneys general.