John Ashcroft is currently serving as attorney general of the United States.

Ashcroft was born in Chicago, IL, on May 9, 1942, and raised in Springfield, MO, where he attended public schools. Ashcroft and his wife Janet have three children: Martha, John, and Andrew.

After graduating with honors from Yale University in 1964, Ashcroft earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1967. He then began his career of public service as Missouri auditor in 1973 and continued when elected to two terms as the state's attorney general and two terms as governor of Missouri between 1984 and 1993. In 1991 the National Governors Association elected him as chairman of their organization.

Ashcroft has also authored the book Lessons from a Father to His Son and co-authored multiple editions of two college law textbooks with his wife.

After being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1994, Ashcroft maintained a near-perfect voting attendance record and served as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee.

He was defeated for Senate reelection in 2000 by the late governor, Mel Carnahan, who was killed three weeks before the election in a freak plane accident. (There was not enough time at that point to remove Carnahan's name from the ballot.) After this defeat, President-elect George W. Bush nominated Ashcroft as attorney general for the new administration. Ashcroft gained the position after surviving a difficult, and sometimes partisan, confirmation hearing process in the Senate Judiciary Committee.