Politics

High-Profile GOP Lawyers Who Supported Thompson Shift to Romney

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Several prominent Republican lawyers are shifting their support to Mitt Romney after Fred Thompson’s withdrawal from the presidential race, two political blogs report. Many have ties to U.S. Supreme Court justices.

They include:

–Former Justice Department official Rachel Brand, who once clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

–Former Justice Department official Viet Dihn, who helped devise the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism legal policies, now a law professor at Georgetown. He once clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

–Husband and wife legal team Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova. Toensing worked in the Reagan Justice Department and diGenova was the former U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C.

–Charles Cooper, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration who once clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

–Eugene Scalia, the former chief lawyer for the Labor Department who is the son of Justice Antonin Scalia, is also supporting Romney. Previously, he was neutral.

Reporting the news is the Chicago Tribune blog The Swamp and the Atlantic blog MarcAmbinder.

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