Edwin Meese

On October 8, 2019, president Donald Trump presented Meese the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. Former Meese chief of staff Mark Levin paid tribute to him at the ceremony.

In 2017 Meese became a Veteran Companion of the Military Order of Foreign Wars.

For his lifetime of service and leadership, Meese was named the first-ever Honorary Reagan Fellow of Eureka College (Eureka, Illinois) at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. in 2008. Recognizing Meese as a model for young people, the honor was given on behalf of the Reagan Fellows program President Ronald Reagan established at his own alma mater in 1982. Meese is a charter member of the Ronald W. Reagan Society of Eureka College and a featured speaker at the "Reagan and the Midwest" academic conference held on campus to launch the Reagan Centennial in 2011.

In May 2006 Meese was named a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group by group co-chairmen James Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, commissioned to assess and report on the contemporary status of the Iraq War. Meese co-authored the group's final December 2006 report.

Meese served two terms as a member of the Board of Visitors of George Mason University from 1996 to 2004. From 1998 to 2004, he served as rector (chairman) of the board.

Meese served on the executive committee (1994) and as president (1996) of the Council for National Policy (CNP), and he served as co-chairman of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Sentencing Committee.

McKay never prosecuted or sought indictment of Meese, but in his official report, which is still confidential, he was highly critical of Meese's ethics and urged further investigation of Meese's role in that scandal and others such as Meese's efforts to help Bechtel Corporation. Meese described it as a "full vindication". While Meese was never convicted of any wrongdoing, he resigned in 1988 when the independent counsel delivered the report on Wedtech.

Meese serves on the boards of several institutions. Meese has held the Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation since 1988, when he joined the think tank. It is the only policy chair in the United States officially named for the 40th president. He is also chairman of Heritage's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, founded in 2001 to advance conservative views about the Constitution, legal principles and their impact on public policy.

In February 1987, James C. McKay was named independent counsel in the Wedtech case. The investigation centered on actions Meese took that benefited him and his longtime friend and former lawyer, E. Robert Wallach. McKay looked into Meese's involvement, while Attorney General, in negotiations involving the company Wedtech. (E. Robert Wallach worked as a lobbyist for the company and sought help from Meese on Wedtech contract matters.)

Near the end of Reagan's presidency, Meese's involvement in the Iran–Contra affair as a "counselor" and "friend" to Reagan was scrutinized by the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, which stated in its official report that Meese's knowledge of the 1985 HAWK transaction "raised serious legal questions".

In 1985, Meese received Government Executive magazine's annual award for excellence in management for his service in this role.

In 1985 Meese delivered a speech calling for a "jurisprudence of original intent" and criticizing the Supreme Court for straying from the original intention of the U.S. Constitution. Justices William J. Brennan and John Paul Stevens disagreed with Meese publicly later that year. The dispute foreshadowed the contentious Robert Bork hearings of 1987.

Reagan nominated Meese to be William French Smith's successor as Attorney General on January 23, 1984. For more than a year, Democrats repeatedly charged Meese with unethical conduct to bar his confirmation as attorney general, including a report by Archibald Cox to the Senate on Meese's "lack of ethical sensitivity" and "blindness to abuse of position".

On May 21, 1984, Reagan announced his intention to appoint the Attorney General to study the effect of pornography on society. The Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, often called the Meese report, convened in the spring of 1985 and published its findings in July 1986. The Meese Report advised that pornography was in varying degrees harmful. Following the release of the report, guidelines of the Meese-led Department of Justice were modified to enable the government to file multiple cases in various jurisdictions at the same time which eroded some of the markets for pornography.

Meese created a "storm of controversy" in December 1983 after his responses to questions about hunger in America. In response to a question about balancing spending cuts against the need to feed hungry children, he said that he had seen no "authoritative" evidence that children in America were going hungry and that some of the allegations "are purely political." When asked about soup kitchens, he said that "some people are going to soup kitchens voluntarily.... I know we've had considerable information that people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that that's easier than paying for it." Democratic leaders and social welfare activists called his comments "disgraceful," "an outrage," "unkind," "mean-spirited," and "absolutely ridiculous". Tip O'Neill, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, compared Meese to Ebenezer Scrooge. Shortly after, Meese offered a tongue-in-cheek defense of Scrooge, saying that he "had his faults, but he wasn't unfair to anyone" and that he suffered from "a bad press".

Meese served as a liaison to the conservative evangelical community, arranging for meetings between social-conservative leaders and the president. Meese was lauded by social conservatives for his address to the Congress on the Bible in March 1982, when he said, "Someone has estimated that throughout the course of history man has adopted over four billion laws. It seems to me, with all that effort, we haven't improved one iota on the Ten Commandments."

Meese became Counselor to the President, who appointed him as a member of both his Cabinet and the National Security Council from 1981 to 1985. On Monday, September 14, 1981, Meese chaired the first White House discussion of what would become Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the missile defense program.

Following the Iowa caucuses, Meese joined the 1980 Reagan presidential campaign full-time as chief of staff in charge of day-to-day campaign operations and senior issues adviser. After the 1980 election, Meese headed Reagan's transition effort.

On November 17, 1980, Meese and James Baker held a meeting to divide their list of White House responsibilities, since both saw the potential for future conflict because of their positions being somewhat similar in nature. The one-page memorandum listed Meese's responsibilities as:

In the mid-1980s, there was a federal investigation into Meese's connections and alleged financial improprieties related to his efforts to help the Bechtel Corporation build an Iraqi pipeline. The pipeline was to extend from Iraq to Jordan and was negotiated by Meese, Shimon Peres, Bruce Rappaport, Robert C. McFarlane, and others. The report of special prosecutor James C. McKay cleared Meese of criminal wrongdoing but criticized him for ethical lapses, especially regarding bribes to Israel not to attack an Iraqi oil pipeline that benefited associates of the Attorney General.

In the late-1980s, Meese was investigated for his role in covering up the Iran-Contra Affair to limit damage to President Ronald Reagan. Although evidence supporting this accusation came to light, Meese was ultimately not charged with any obstruction.

After receiving a grant from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Meese developed what he called "a plan for a law school center for criminal justice policy and management". The plan was accepted by the University of San Diego, a private Catholic school. From the fall of 1977 to January 1981, Meese served as professor of law at the university, where he also directed the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Management. During the same time, Meese served as vice chairman of California's Organized Crime Control Commission and participated in the California Bar Association's criminal law section.

From January 1975 to May 1976, Meese served as vice president for administration of Rohr Industries in Chula Vista, California. He left Rohr to enter private law practice in San Diego County, California.

As Reagan's chief of staff, Meese was instrumental in the decision to crack down on student protesters at People's Park in Berkeley, California, on May 15, 1969. Meese was widely criticized for escalating the official response to the People's Park protest, during which law enforcement officers killed one student, on his way to class, who was not a protester and injured hundreds of others, including bystanders. Meese advised Reagan to declare a state of emergency in Berkeley, contrary to the recommendation of the Berkeley City Council. That resulted in a two-week occupation of People's Park by National Guard troops.

Meese joined Ronald Reagan's staff in 1967. He served as legal affairs secretary from 1967 to 1968 and as executive assistant and chief of staff to Governor Reagan from 1969 to 1974. Despite his later well-known fondness for Reagan, Meese was initially reluctant to accept the appointment because he thought of himself as non-partisan: "I was not particularly interested."

In 1959 he married his high school sweetheart Ursula Herrick, daughter of Oakland's postmaster.

Meese returned to California, obtaining a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where he was a state Moot Court champion. He graduated in 1958 and accepted a position with the district attorney's office of Alameda County as a law clerk. While there, he worked under District Attorney J. Frank Coakley. He also worked with future DA Delwen Lowell Jensen. Jensen was engaged in developing a case-management software program known as Dalite. Meese prosecuted felony cases while maintaining a private practice on nights and weekends, focusing on civil law. During this service, he first drew the attention of Republican State Senator Donald Grunsky, who would later recommend him to governor-elect Ronald Reagan.

Meese became a member of ROTC upon enrollment at Yale, and upon graduation he obtained a commission in the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant. He spent 24 months at Fort Sill near Lawton, Oklahoma. Meese gained experience in logistics, conducting installation and operations of the 240 mm howitzer M1. Meese completed active duty in 1956 and continued in the United States Army Reserve, specializing in military intelligence. Meese retired from the Army Reserve as a colonel in 1984.

Two weeks prior to graduation, he was accepted to Yale University and granted a scholarship. Meese served as president of the Yale Political Union, chairman of the Conservative Party, and chairman of the Yale Debating Association. Meese made the dean's list, and graduated with a bachelor of arts of political science in 1953.

At age 10, Meese published along with his brothers a mimeographed neighborhood newspaper, the Weekly Herald, and used the proceeds to buy a war bond. The young Meese also rode a bicycle on a paper route and worked in a drugstore. At Oakland High School, Meese was involved in the Junior State of America and led his high school debate team to statewide championships. He was recognized as valedictorian, class of 1949.

Edwin Meese III (born December 2, 1931) is an American attorney, law professor, author and member of the Republican Party who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial administration (1967–1974), the Reagan presidential transition team (1980–81) and the Reagan administration (1981–1985). Following the 1984 election, he was considered for the position of White House Chief of Staff by President Reagan, but James Baker was chosen instead. Meese eventually rose to hold the position of the 75th United States Attorney General (1985–1988), a position from which he resigned following the Wedtech scandal.

However, he was finally confirmed by a vote of 63–31, with more opposition than any other Attorney General nominee had received since the 1920s. Meese became Attorney General in February 1985.