American president Donald Trump’s legal challenges in Pennsylvania over ballot counting and mail-in deadlines have evoked memories of the Supreme Court case that decided the 2000 presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. – By Gerald Gekara
However, Trump’s legal team is nothing like the fortified case assembled by James Baker, the architect of Bush’s legal strategy.
In a new biography on Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington by the journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, his reputation was so formidable that Gore’s supporters “knew they would lose the moment they heard of his selection.”
Bush’s legal team included three future Supreme Court justices—John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—as well as Ted Cruz, now a U.S. senator, and John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor.
The New York Times reported that Trump has leaned on his family and on former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as he seeks to ratchet up his legal strategy.
His son-in-law Jared Kushneris rumoured to be looking for a “James Baker-like” figure to lead their efforts.
The firebrand former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has become the public face of the campaign’s legal challenges in Nevada, although he is not a lawyer.
