Who is Ted Olson, the former Bush lawyer representing CNN and Acosta against the White House?
by Naomi Lim
| November 13, 2018 05:27 PM
The lawyer suing the Trump administration on behalf of CNN and Jim Acosta is a veteran Republican who successfully argued for former President George W. Bush before the Supreme Court in the Bush v. Gore case that decided the 2000 Florida recount.
Theodore Olson — known as Ted — was widowed on 9/11 when his wife Barbara Olson, a conservative columnist and author, was killed on board American Airlines Flight 77 as it crashed into the Pentagon after being hijacked by al Qaeda terrorists. He had spoken to her minutes earlier when she managed to phone him from the plane.
Olson, 78, later broke with social conservatives when he became a passionate advocate for same-sex marriage rights but was considered last year as a member of President Trump's legal team before balking publicly, saying: "I think everybody would agree — this is turmoil, it’s chaos, it’s confusion, it’s not good for anything.â€
He served as solicitor general under Bush from 2001 to 2004, having previously worked for the Justice Department during the Reagan administration. In 2010, he and prominent First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams argued for Citizens United in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which lifted restrictions on political advertising spending by corporations, unions, and individuals.
The seasoned litigator then collaborated with David Boies, his opposing counsel in Bush v. Gore, to help two same-sex couples via Hollingsworth v. Perry in their effort to overturn California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in 2013.
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