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Ted Olson biography

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Ted Olson is an American attorney who served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1984.

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Ted Olson is an American attorney who served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan administration (1981-1984). Democrats allege Olson was part of the Arkansas Project, which aimed to damage and end the presidency of Bill Clinton during the 1990's. In private legal practice, Olson later successfully represented presidential candidate George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore.

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Attorney. Theodore Bevry Olson was born September 11, 1940, in Chicago. He was educated in public schools in California, receiving his undergraduate degree in communication and history at the University of Pacific in Stockton, California, in 1962. After earning his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) in 1965, Olson worked as an associate in the Los Angeles office of the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. He was made a partner in 1972, having specialized in constitutional, commercial and administrative law.

Olson then served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1984 before returning to private practice as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of his former law firm. He was legal counsel to U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the investigation of the Iran-contra affair. He also represented Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted of selling government secrets to Israel, in his failed bid for a reduction of his life sentence.

Democrats allege Olson was also part of the Arkansas Project, which aimed to damage and end the presidency of Bill Clinton during the 1990's. Olson assisted Paula Jones' legal team in her sexual harassment suit against Clinton. Olson later successfully represented presidential candidate George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore, which effectively determined the final result of the contested 2000 presidential election. Olson served as U.S. solicitor general under Bush from 2001 to 2004.

Olson's third wife, lawyer and frequent television commentator Barbara K. Olson, was a passenger on the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, his 61st birthday.

In 2005, Olson was twice considered a potential nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. First, to fill Sandra Day O??Conner's post in and again following the withdrawal of Harriet Miers.

In 2002, Olson met Lady Booth, a tax attorney from Kentucky and married in 2006.

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