Lobbyist Ashcroft pulls in $269,000 Clients capitalize on policies he prom

[jbfam4]

TRIBUNE EXCLUSIVE

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0601100146jan10,1,5202568.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Lobbyist Ashcroft pulls in $269,000
Clients capitalize on policies he promoted

By Andrew Zajac
Washington Bureau
Published January 10, 2006


WASHINGTON -- Less than three months after registering as a lobbyist, former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft has banked at least $269,000 from just four clients and appears to be developing a practice centered on companies that want to capitalize on a government demand for homeland security technology that boomed under sometimes controversial policies he promoted while in office.


While Ashcroft's lobbying is within government rules for former officials, it is nonetheless a departure from the practice of attorneys general for at least the last 30 years. While others have counseled corporate clients or perhaps even lobbied in a specific case as part of law firm business, Ashcroft is the first in recent memory to open a lobbying firm.


"One would have thought that a former attorney general wouldn't be doing that," said John Schmidt, an associate attorney general in the Clinton administration who now is a lawyer at Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw of Chicago. "To take the kind of prestige and stature of the attorney general . . . . It seems a little demeaning of the office, honestly."

Attorneys general, while not always apolitical, have tended to avoid the role of "a hired gun selling his connections," said Charles Tiefer, a former deputy general counsel to the House and author of "Veering Right: How the Bush Administration Subverts the Law for Conservative Causes."

"The attorney general is very much supposed to embody the pure rule of law--like the statue of `Blind Justice'--and he's not expected afterwards to cloak, with the mantle of his former office, a bunch of greedy interests," said Tiefer, who teaches law at the University of Baltimore.

[UpInArms]

1. he probably extorts the money by threatening to sing

that awful song - a brand new kind of hush money :evilgrin: