Everyone knows how, on that awful night in Florida in November, 2000, some very questionable activities took place- voter registries purged, people denied votes by being labelled incorrectly as felons, some ballots disappearing all together, and a relentless right-wing legal assault all combined to make George W. Bush the President of the United States and change our future forever.

Jeb Bush’s role in the criminal misuse of the governor’s powers is well known by this point. What is less known is the role of another 2016 GOP candidate. The legal team whose machinations put George W. in the White House was put together by none other then Ted Cruz.

Cruz had formerly clerked for Chief Justice Willam H. Rehnquist, and one of his first calls was to John Roberts, the man who is now in his tenth year as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Cruz told the New York Times that “We started to assemble a team of the best lawyers and in particular the best Supreme Court lawyers in the country, and John’s name naturally came near the top of the list.” Roberts had also previously clerked for Rehnquist and was known to be a voracious opponent of voter’s rights.

The Nation writes that:

“Roberts edited legal briefs, including the Bush campaign’s 50-page submission to the Supreme Court, and ­prepared Theodore Olson, a former assistant attorney general under Reagan, for oral arguments. He also advised Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, on how the state legislature could assign its presidential electors to George W. Bush before the recount was finished. ‘I really appreciate your input on my role in this unique and historic situation,’ Bush wrote to Roberts.”

It’s very interesting to see how those networks of influence have all come together and elevated the men involved to high positions of importance. It is also very disturbing to know that not only one but two of the current crop of presidential candidates were involved in the biggest case of election fraud our nation has ever seen- one that began a presidency that would shatter our nation’s economy, get us intractably mired in two foreign wars, and send our national debt through the roof. We owe it to ourselves as a nation to not let it happen again. If they’ve done it once, they will certainly do it again- the stakes are much higher now, and with the Koch Brothers prepared to drop $900 million into this next election cycle, so are the rewards.