1. John David Ashcroft was born on May 9,1942 and is an American lawyer, lobbyist, and former politician who served as the 79th United States attorney general under President George W Bush from 2001 to 2005.
58 Facts About John Ashcroft
1. 2.
John Ashcroft later founded The Ashcroft Group, a Washington DC lobbying firm.
3.
John Ashcroft graduated from Hillcrest High School in 1960 before receiving a Bachelor of Arts from Yale College and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
4.
John Ashcroft then served two consecutive terms as Missouri Attorney General and as Missouri Governor.
5.
John Ashcroft is the only Republican to serve two full consecutive terms as governor to date.
6.
John Ashcroft served one term as a US Senator from Missouri until losing a race for a second term in 2000.
7.
John Ashcroft has written several books about politics and ethics.
8.
John Ashcroft stepped down as Attorney General in February 2005 and was replaced by Alberto Gonzales.
9.
Since 2011, John Ashcroft sits on the board of directors for the private military company Academi and is a professor at the Regent University School of Law, a conservative Christian institution affiliated with the late televangelist Pat Robertson; he has been a member of the Federalist Society.
10.
John Ashcroft's son, Jay Ashcroft, is a politician who served as Secretary of State of Missouri from 2017 to 2025 before a failed bid for governor in 2024.
11.
John David Ashcroft was born in Chicago on May 9,1942, the son of homemaker Grace P and minister James Robert Ashcroft.
12.
John Ashcroft grew up in Willard, Missouri, where his father was a minister in an Assemblies of God congregation in nearby Springfield, served as president of Evangel University, and jointly as President of Central Bible College.
13.
John Ashcroft attended Yale University, where he was a member of the St Elmo Society, graduating in 1964.
14.
John Ashcroft received a Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967.
15.
In 1972, John Ashcroft ran for a congressional seat in southwest Missouri in the Republican primary election, narrowly losing to Gene Taylor.
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In 1974, Ashcroft was narrowly defeated for election to that post by Jackson County Executive George W Lehr.
17.
Lehr had argued that John Ashcroft, who is not an accountant, was not qualified to be the State Auditor.
18.
In 1976, Danforth retired from the state attorney general post to run for the US Senate, and John Ashcroft ran to replace him.
19.
John Ashcroft was unopposed in the Republican primary and defeated Democrat James Baker in the general election.
20.
John Ashcroft was scheduled to be sworn in on January 10,1977, but Danforth resigned from his post early ahead of his swearing in to the US Senate, thus Ashcroft became attorney general on December 27,1976.
21.
In 1980, John Ashcroft was re-elected with 64.5 percent of the vote, winning 96 of Missouri's 114 counties.
22.
In 1983, John Ashcroft wrote the leading amicus curiae brief in the US Supreme Court Case Sony Corp.
23.
John Ashcroft was elected governor in 1984 and re-elected in 1988, becoming the first Republican in Missouri history elected to two consecutive terms.
24.
In 1988, John Ashcroft won by a larger margin over his Democratic opponent, Betty Cooper Hearnes, the wife of the former governor Warren Hearnes.
25.
In 1998, John Ashcroft briefly considered running for US president, but, on January 5,1999, he decided that he would seek re-election to his Senate seat in the 2000 election and not run for president.
26.
John Ashcroft remains the first and so far only US Senator to have been defeated for re-election by a deceased person.
27.
In December 2000, following his Senatorial defeat, Ashcroft was chosen for the position of US attorney general by president-elect George W Bush.
28.
John Ashcroft was confirmed by the US Senate by a vote of 58 to 42, with most Democratic senators voting against him, citing his prior opposition to using busing to achieve school desegregation, and their opposition to Ashcroft's opposition to abortion.
29.
John Ashcroft granted a 30-day stay of execution for Timothy McVeigh, the man sentenced to death for the bombing.
30.
In July 2001, John Ashcroft began flying exclusively by private jet.
31.
At the time, John Ashcroft was the only Cabinet appointee who traveled on a private jet, excluding the special cases of Interior and Energy who have responsibilities which require chartered jets.
32.
John Ashcroft referred to the American Library Association's opposition to Section 215 as "hysteria" in two separate speeches given in September 2003.
33.
In January 2002, 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 covered with blue curtains.
34.
Department officials long insisted that the curtains were put up to improve the room's use as a television backdrop and that John Ashcroft had nothing to do with it.
35.
In July 2002, John Ashcroft proposed the creation of Operation TIPS, a domestic program in which workers and government employees would inform law enforcement agencies about suspicious behavior they encounter while performing their duties.
36.
John Ashcroft defended the program as a necessary component of the ongoing War on Terrorism, but the proposal was eventually abandoned.
37.
John Ashcroft proposed a draft of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, legislation to expand the powers of the US government to fight crime and terrorism, while simultaneously eliminating or curtailing judicial review of these powers for incidents related to domestic terrorism.
38.
On May 26,2004, John Ashcroft held a news conference at which he said that intelligence from multiple sources indicated that the terrorist organization, al Qaeda, intended to attack the United States in the coming months.
39.
John Ashcroft said specifically, "the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms," expressing the position that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, unrelated to militia service.
40.
In March 2004, the Justice Department under John Ashcroft ruled President Bush's domestic intelligence program illegal.
41.
John Ashcroft, "summoning the strength to lift his head and speak", refused to sign.
42.
John Ashcroft pushed his US attorneys to pursue voter fraud cases.
43.
In May 2005, John Ashcroft laid the groundwork for a strategic consulting firm, The John Ashcroft Group, LLC He started operation in the fall of 2005 and as of March 2006 had twenty-one clients, turning down two for every one accepted.
44.
In 2005 year-end filings, John Ashcroft's firm reported collecting $269,000, including $220,000 from Oracle Corporation, which won Department of Justice approval of a multibillion-dollar acquisition less than a month after hiring John Ashcroft.
45.
John Ashcroft was hired by the National Association of Broadcasters, which is strongly opposed to the merger.
46.
In 2011, John Ashcroft became an "independent director" on the board of Xe Services, the controversial private military company formerly known as Blackwater, which faced scores of charges related to weapons trafficking, unlawful force, and corruption, and had named Ted Wright as CEO in May 2011.
47.
In June 2018, John Ashcroft was reportedly hired by Najib Razak among other top US lawyers to defend him in the 1MDB scandal, back in 2016.
48.
John Ashcroft wrote that the government asserts it can detain American citizens "not because there is evidence that they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing".
49.
John Ashcroft called it "a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history".
50.
John Ashcroft asserts that Ashcroft violated his civil liberties as an American citizen, as he was treated like a terrorist and not allowed to consult an attorney.
51.
When Karl Rove was being questioned in 2005 by the FBI over the leak of a covert CIA agent's identity in the press, John Ashcroft was allegedly briefed about the investigation.
52.
John Ashcroft is a member of the Assemblies of God church.
53.
John Ashcroft is married to Janet E Ashcroft and has three children with her.
54.
John Ashcroft performed the Star Spangled Banner before the National Hockey League all-star game in St Louis in 1988.
55.
John Ashcroft composed a paean titled "Let the Eagle Soar," which he sang at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in February 2002.
56.
John Ashcroft has written and sung a number of other songs.
57.
John Ashcroft has collected these on compilation tapes, including In the Spirit of Life and Liberty and Gospel According to John.
58.
John Ashcroft was given an honorary doctorate before delivering the commencement address at Toccoa Falls College in 2018.