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Nominee Admits He Registered as Lobbyist

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Times Staff Writer

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. acknowledged Wednesday that he had registered as a lobbyist for the cosmetics industry in 2001 -- a fact he omitted on a questionnaire he delivered to a Senate committee Tuesday.

The omission was first reported in Newsday on Wednesday.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, Roberts explained that his firm had registered him as a lobbyist because he met with government lawyers as part of his work representing the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Assn. At the time, the association sought to block a proposed labeling regulation by the Food and Drug Administration.

“I was asked to prepare a legal analysis of how the proposed regulation would violate the 1st Amendment,” Roberts said in the letter to Leahy. “Since I shared this legal analysis with government attorneys, my firm, through another partner, filed a lobbying registration under the Lobbying Disclosure Act on which I was listed. This should have been noted on my questionnaire.”

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Roberts explained that because his work for the association consisted of preparation for litigation, “the question about lobbying on the questionnaire did not trigger a memory of those meetings.”

In the 67-page questionnaire, Roberts noted that he had registered as a lobbyist in 1998 in connection with legal work for two peanut growers associations. He said he did not recall meeting with government officials but registered as a lobbyist “in perhaps an excess of caution.”

Later in the document, Roberts listed a speech he delivered to the cosmetic association in April 2000, but he made no mention of a lobbying connection.

The Lobbying Disclosure Act requires lawyers who represent clients before government officials and agencies to register their client relationship.

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