Attorney General: John D. Ashcroft
John David Ashcroft was born on May 9, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. Raised in Springfield, Missouri, he received his bachelor’s degree with honors from Yale University in 1964 and his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967. Ashcroft and his wife, Janet, opened a law practice in Springfield, Missouri, in 1967. He also accepted a teaching position in business law at Southwest Missouri State University, where he remained until entering public service in 1973 as state auditor. He served as that state’s assistant attorney general from 1975 to 1977 and as its attorney general from 1977 to 1984. Ashcroft was elected Governor of Missouri in 1984 and held that post until 1993. Upon relinquishing the governorship, he was employed by a private law firm until 1994. Ashcroft was then elected U.S. Senator from Missouri in 1994. He served in the U.S. Senate from January 1995 to January 2001.
President George W. Bush appointed Ashcroft as Attorney General of the United States on February 1, 2001, the same day that his nomination was confirmed by the Senate. Ashcroft served in that office until February 3, 2005. Upon departing the Department of Justice, he founded a strategic consulting firm and was named a distinguished professor in the schools of law and government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Born in 1935 in Austin, Texas, John Howard Sanden graduated from the Minneapolis School of art and later studied at the Art Students League of New York. In an acclaimed career spanning more than 56 years, he completed 450 portraits of American leaders in government, business, and the professions. His official portraits of President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush were unveiled at the White House in 2012. Sanden painted Attorney General Ashcroft's portrait in 2005. He died in 2022.