Trump Was Right - Ted Cruz Gave Us Justice John Roberts

Ted Cruz / John Roberts

During the Detroit Republican Presidential Debate, Donald Trump again reiterated that Ted Cruz gave us Supreme Court Justice, John Roberts and he was right.

Chief Justice John Roberts is a man whom Cruz has described as a mentor and friend.

Both Cruz and Roberts clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist early in their careers, Roberts from 1980 to 1981, Cruz in the mid-1990s.

After Election Day in 2000, Cruz was a lawyer working on the legal battle over the Florida recount for the Bush/Cheney presidential campaign. Cruz told the Miami Herald that Roberts’ name was the first that came to mind when he was asked to help find lawyers to work on the litigation. Roberts reportedly helped with legal briefs and participated in a mock hearing to prepare Bush’s legal team.

“We needed the very best lawyers in the country, and I called John and asked him to help,” Cruz later wrote in the National Review. “Within hours, he was on a plane to Florida.”

When President George W. Bush nominated Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, Cruz was an outspoken advocate for his confirmation, calling him “brilliant” and a “lawyer’s lawyer.”

“As an individual, John Roberts is undoubtedly a principled conservative, as is the president who appointed him,” Cruz wrote. “He clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist, worked in the Reagan White House, and served as the principal deputy solicitor general in President George H.W. Bush’s Justice Department.

“But, as a jurist, Judge Roberts’s approach will be that of his entire career: carefully, faithfully applying the Constitution and legal precedent". Cruz said.