Guest: Dana Milbank, Jonathan Turley, Leon Panetta, David Dreier, Mo Rocca, Kendall Coffey

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST:  The president has selected John G. Roberts as his Supreme Court nominee, and will make that announcement official exactly one hour from now.

A fierce confirmation fight awaits Judge Roberts.  The good news is, though, that whether or not he is confirmed, Roberts will still be eligible for the new Supreme Court employee discount.  Yes, even a rejected nominee will pay exactly what the justices pay for a new car, because now, for the first time in history, everyone in America gets the Supreme Court employee discount...

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, the process is over, and at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, 6:00 p.m. Pacific tonight, President Bush will reveal Judge John Glover Roberts of the District of Columbia Circuit Federal Appeals Court, as his nominee to succeed Sandra Day O‘Connor in a live nationally telecast announcement you can see reported here on MSNBC by Brian Williams at the top of the hour.

And then the party starts.  Mr. Bush passing up a chance to spill the beans this afternoon at a news briefing, they spilled on his behalf about 15 minutes ago, as we soon learned, the politics of programming providing an incentive to hold out for prime time, challenging the president to say as much as he could, without saying really anything much at all...

OLBERMANN:  He is ready.  In fact, the media was ready 75 minutes before he was, busting his secret, his choice of John Roberts, even before an off-camera, off-the-record briefing at the White House at 7:45 Eastern.  The official announcement now less than an hour away.

NBC‘s chief justice correspondent is Pete Williams.  And he joins us now from Washington.  Good evening, Pete.

PETE WILLIAMS, MSNBC JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT:  Good evening to you, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  All right, (INAUDIBLE)...

WILLIAMS:  He‘s done just about everything at the Supreme Court except be a justice.  He was a clerk there, he has argued there, so he certainly knows where the court is.

OLBERMANN:  And perhaps the first thing that jumps off the resume at someone looking at the makeup of this court and the times that we live in and the news that we have been dealing with in the last year was that he clerked for the then-associate Supreme Court Justice Rehnquist 25 years ago.

WILLIAMS:  Right.  And, you know, here‘s a guy who is from very definitely the legal establishment here in Washington.  He was a clerk to a federal judge, then a clerk to William Rehnquist, Harvard Law School.  Followed that track right out of the paper chase from Harvard to clerking for two federal judges, and it‘s common to go from a district federal judge then to the Supreme Court.

And then he went into the Bush—the Justice Department, rather, under President Reagan, was a deputy solicitor general.  That‘s the part of the Justice Department where they prepare and argue cases to the Supreme Court.  So he got to know the Supreme Court from that angle.

Then he went into private practice for one of the most established law firms here in Washington, Hogan and Hartson, where he became part of that elite little group of lawyers here in Washington who practice before the Supreme Court.  So he became an advocate before the Supreme Court.

And then now a federal judge for two years, appointed by the current president.

OLBERMANN:  When he was in the solicitor general‘s office, there was a brief filed that stated that Roe v. Wade had been wrongly decided, which he signed onto.  But the—whether or not, that does not necessarily mean that is an expression of his opinion.  And I know that he was asked about this when nominated to the court of appeals.

Do we have an actual litmus test?  Has he left a—the proverbial paper trail, and rather, never mind the paper chase, on that one issue?

WILLIAMS:  Well, you know, one of the things about the fact that he‘s only been a federal judge for two years means that unlike, say, Michael Luttig, another young conservative judge from the Fourth Circuit, who was also very much in contention, Judge Roberts hasn‘t been on the court very long.  So as a judge, he doesn‘t have much of a paper trail.

And, of course, his position, and the position his defenders will take, is that he was an advocate for a president who opposed Roe v. Wade.  And that was his job then, to represent that view, just as when he went into private practice, he had to argue the views of the clients that he represented then.

So that‘s the difference, I think his supporters would say, and probably he himself would say, between being an advocate and being a judge.

OLBERMANN:  The name that went out all day today, more than any other, more than any other, perhaps, in this whole process since Justice O‘Connor announced she was going to retire, was Edith Joy Brown Clement of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

WILLIAMS:  Right.

OLBERMANN:  Was—do you think now that perhaps she was something of a trial balloon, or did somebody just follow a false lead on that?

WILLIAMS:  I think that she was considered and was a finalist, and as far as we are told, did come up here to Washington and have meetings at the White House.  So I don‘t think that was misdirection.  I think what you have here, Brian, is—Keith, rather—is a situation in which there was such a starvation for knowledge.  I think maybe four or five people, total, in town, if you count Judge Roberts, knew who the choice was.

And in that, given that huge vacuum, it was a tile bathroom into which someone threw one golf ball, and that was Edith Clement, and that bounced around all day, and seemed like a lot more than it was.

But I think there was—it just shows you how little was known and how great the appetite was for what little was out there.

OLBERMANN:  What wonderful imagery.  NBC‘s chief justice correspondent, Pete Williams.  As always, sir, thank you for your insight.

WILLIAMS:  My pleasure.

OLBERMANN:  Let‘s go over to the White House.  Kelly O‘Donnell with later details on this story as it breaks, the official announcement now about 53 minutes away, of Justice Roberts to be the nominee for the Supreme Court.

Kelly, good evening.

KELLY O‘DONNELL, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT:  Good evening, Keith.

White House officials have been briefing reporters about some of what went behind the scenes that will culminate with Judge John Roberts being put in nomination tonight.

We now know the president considered 11 potential nominees.  When he traveled to Denmark, on his way to the G8 summit, senior officials say that he took a briefing book that included 11 candidates.  He interviewed five of those in person, one on Thursday, two on Friday, and two on Saturday.

Judge John Roberts was interviewed on Friday.  He was interviewed in the White House residence.  The meeting lasted about an hour and a half, and it included a tour of some of the behind-the-scenes areas of the White House, things like the Truman Balcony, the Lincoln Bedroom.  The president wanted it to be a relaxed environment and a chance to get to know the 50-year-old judge.

So that‘s some of the details that is now coming out.

The president consulted more than 70 senators, saying that they wanted to have deep and wide consultation with the U.S. Senate.  Now, there are some on the Democratic side who do not believe that it has gone far enough.  But the White House insists that it has done more, and some say it has been unprecedented, attributing that comment to some of the Republican senators, who believe that they have had a fair opportunity to offer suggestions to the president.

That briefing is still going on.  I ran out the door to give you these particular details.  The judge was notified early today, told that he would be the president‘s choice.  And again, he had his face-to-face meeting with the president on Friday, and the two are still getting to know each other.  The president had reached his conclusion last night, senior officials say, but really reached a firm conclusion this morning when there were a few details that were not described to us that became firmed up.

So the choice is John Roberts, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  Kelly, what are they expecting now in terms of the political dispute that is certainly going to follow from perhaps one direction, and perhaps both?

O‘DONNELL:  Well, one of the faces you will see a great deal more of is Fred Thompson, who our viewers know both as a former senator of Tennessee and an actor on television and in films.  He will, in many ways, be the public face escorting this nominee through the process, because of his relationships with people on the Hill and his public persona, to try to assist John Roberts in getting the introductions that are necessary.

Part of why the White House wanted this to be announced with enough time before the recess, which is at the end of next week, is to give senators a chance to get face-to-face time with this nominee, to have private conversations, and to give all of the bureaucracy of the Senate an appropriate amount of time to do its own research on the background, the rulings, the thinking of this man, to be prepared to go forward with confirmation hearings.

Of course, the president has scheduled all of August for Crawford, Texas, his ranch, and so a lot will be going on during that time.  He has also said the word that he wants the extreme groups that are pouring money into this and are expected to try to influence the process, even now that a choice has been made, encouraging them to sort of quiet down.

So the White House has rolled this out really trying to have this undercurrent of, we‘ve consulted far and wide, we‘ve picked what they consider to be a consensus choice.

And so beginning tomorrow, you‘ll see a lot of the next phase, which goes down the street to the Hill, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  Kelly, we know you‘ve got about 49 minutes to prepare for this announcement, so let me ask you one last question, with our thanks, and then we‘ll let you go.  The staging of this, the televised announcement, that analogy was not made entirely in jest, that it sounds a little bit like the end of a TV reality series.

What is the thinking there at the White House for why the big show has been put on tonight?

O‘DONNELL:  Well, it will be a dramatic setting in the state room on what they call the state floor, where the nominee and his family will be present.  Justice Sandra Day O‘Connor will not be present.  She has a speaking engagement in Spokane, Washington, tomorrow.  So the outgoing justice will not participate.

This will be about a 10-minute window, where the president and his choice will be able to make remarks.  It is intended to be grand.  It is intended to have the aura of history, because, as we all know, a presidential choice for the Supreme Court goes long beyond his tenure at the White House, could affect the American public for a generation or more.

So they wanted to give it a high drama setting, and that‘s what we expect tonight.

OLBERMANN:  Especially a 50-year-old nominee.  Kelly O‘Donnell at the White House, great thanks.

To recap briefly what Kelly just reported, there were 11 potential nominees by President Bush, considered by President Bush, as he took that briefing book with him to the G8 summit two weeks ago.  And five, ultimately five interviewees, the last of them on Saturday, Judge Roberts on Friday.

Politically, the president probably didn‘t know this, but historically, July 19, the date he selected Judge Roberts, has not been a particularly good day for liberals.  It is the day George McGovern was born, the day Geraldine Ferraro was nominated, and the day Chappaquiddick happened.

On this nomination to the high court, the president would doubtless like the kind of lopsided conservative triumph any one of those names would suggest.  Is there the chance he might get it?

Let‘s bring in Dana Milbank, national political reporter of “The Washington Post.”

Good evening, Dana.

DANA MILBANK, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, “THE WASHINGTON POST”: 

Good evening, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  Let‘s talk first about the timing of this.  Is there hard-and-fast evidence if—that this was wag the dog?  Was this announcement pushed up?  Was the decision made any more quickly just to try to eclipse the Karl Rove story?

MILBANK:  Oh, there‘s no doubt about it.  It was been reported in conservative, liberal, and down-the-middle publications, people close to the White House saying that this was indeed, we‘re going to wait till the end of the month.  It was only pushed up maybe 10 days, two weeks.  But they clearly wanted to bump Karl Rove out of the headlines and out of the top of your broadcast.  And I believe they‘ve succeed.

OLBERMANN:  All right, so he‘s knocked him off the headlines and out of the front pages.  But how does this, with the presentation of the name John Roberts, which will not mean much to the general public, and does not seem to be that kind of Ta-Dah! candidate that a woman justice would be, or a Hispanic judge—justice would be, how does this keep the Rove story off those front pages and headlines?

MILBANK:  Well, look, we‘re going to go to a period now where we have these extensive biographies that will be done of him, gathered information in the Senate.  Then you go into this long proceedings through the hearings, through the ultimate vote.

So this is going to dominate news up until the court begins October 1.

That‘s not to say the Karl Rove story won‘t make its cameo appearances.  Of course it will.  And it‘s likely to go on somewhat after this nomination ends.  But this clearly is going to become the main game in town now.

OLBERMANN:  And to it, let‘s get it started.  Who did he just, who did the president just tick off the most?  Has he got the liberals coming at him, or the rock-ribbed conservatives, or the moderates, both of them?  Who is going to be alienated faction in this?

MILBANK:  Well, so let‘s start with his wife.  She asked for a woman to be nominated to this.  And for six hours today, we thought it was, we were indeed going to have a Justice Clement.  This was widely reported.  But that‘s not happening.

So some disappointment, certainly, from the left that he won‘t, it won‘t an minority candidate, it won‘t be a woman.

This is not the most controversial in terms of a conservative nominee that he could have found.  But it‘s certainly close to that end.  So in a sense, he is picking a fight with the Democrats in the Senate, but not such an outrageous one that it‘s very obvious that they‘re going to be able to get their footing against him.

OLBERMANN:  As I mentioned with Kelly O‘Donnell, all day long, it was Judge Clement, Judge Clement this, Judge Clement that.  We got to know that Judge Clement uses the name Joy and not the name Edith, which is her given first name.  We got to know which one of those names was her maiden name and which was her middle name.

Why was she out there?  Was it, as Pete Williams suggested, the golfball reverberating in the tile room, or was there an element of a float to that?  Was it perhaps a trial balloon to see if he could sneak an easier-to-confirm, no-paper-trail moderate past everybody?

MILBANK:  Hard to say what their motivation was.  But it‘s pretty clear that this had White House fingerprints on it.  The White House officials themselves weren‘t saying this, but their surrogates were.  John Cornyn, a senator from Texas, even sent out an embargoed speech praising the selection of this particular justice.

So they were clearly encouraging us to believe this and to report it.

Then around, you know, 1:00, 2:00 this afternoon, the pushback began, and suddenly Michael Luttig is spotted in Richmond, all dressed up with his family, although (INAUDIBLE) he must have just been going to a nice lunch.

OLBERMANN:  Dana Milbank, national political reporter of “The Washington Post,” who said around 5:00 Eastern time this afternoon that we would have a name before 8:00.  And as usual, was right on the money.

Great thanks, Dana.

MILBANK:  Thanks, Keith...

OLBERMANN:  If George Bush has his way, he will be Justice John G.  Roberts, born January 27, 1955, in Buffalo, New York, currently serving on the D.C. Court of Appeals.  He will be the president‘s nominee to the United States Supreme Court to fill the vacancy that has been created by the retirement, the imminent retirement, of Sandra Day O‘Connor.

I‘m joined now by Georgetown University Law Professor Jonathan Turley.

Always a pressure to talk to you, Jonathan.

JONATHAN TURLEY, LAW PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY:  Thanks, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  Well, he has my birthday.  I suspect that‘s not the reason President Bush selected him.

TURLEY:  I think that‘s the entire reason.

OLBERMANN:  What is the headline in the career of John Roberts?

TURLEY:  Well, the headline is that there‘s no headline.  He‘s one, he‘s what I once identified a few weeks ago as the leading blank-slate candidate.  He is someone who‘s extremely smart, but someone who‘s only been on the court a short time.  So he has very few cases or opinions to pin on him.

But he has been an active litigator before the Supreme Court.  He‘s a very talented man.  But he has litigated many controversial cases.  And when he worked at the solicitor general‘s office, he was the author of a brief that sought to overturn Roe v. Wade.  Many people in the Roe v. Wade debate believe that he is hostile to pro-choice positions.

OLBERMANN:  Was that his own position, though?  Is it clear that that was his position, or one he was advocating on behalf of his employer, the president of the United States, or even on behalf of the solicitor‘s general‘s office?

TURLEY:  You just gave the theme of the future confirmation hearings.

OLBERMANN:  Ahh.

TURLEY:  That was indeed the issue when he was confirmed for the D.C.  Circuit.  The White House argued that these are—he was simply being a good lawyer.  He was representing his client, and you can‘t blame him for the positions of an administration.

However, it is clear that John Roberts does, I believe, support these views.  If you want to rate John Roberts, I think that you would have to give him very high scores for intelligence.  I mean, he will be the perfect play-pal for Scalia on the court.

In terms of controversy, there will be more controversy for him than some of these other candidates.  But what is there is probably not enough to sink him.  It‘s mainly inferred positions from his past litigation.

OLBERMANN:  Are there also inferred positions that could come up in these hearings that relate to his membership in the Federalist Society, or his clerking for then-Justice Rehnquist, or any of the other things that were much earlier in his career?

TURLEY:  I doubt we‘ll see those, you know, Have you ever been a member of the Federalist Society? questions.  He‘s clearly a favorite of the Federalist Society.  And that society has become a dominant conservative force.

But I also think that in term of the most controversial aspects, is that Roberts will be asked directly for his positions on things like Roe v.  Wade.  He‘s not going to be able to get away with what Clarence Thomas said, which is, Gee, I just never thought about it.  He‘s going to get some very pointed questions.

And then we‘ll see if the Republicans are just going to muscle it through, whether they‘re just going to say, you know, Don‘t answer those questions, and we‘ll rely on our majority votes.

OLBERMANN:  Confirmed by the Senate to the D.C. District Court of Appeals in 2003 by a vote of 14 to three, Biden, Cole, Feinstein, Edwards voting for him, Schumer, Kennedy, Durbin voting against him.  Is there the possibility that those Democrats who supported him two years ago could point to anything in his time on the appeals court and say, My goodness, I never should have voted for him in the first place, and I‘m not going to let this man become a Supreme Court justice if I can say anything about it now?

TURLEY:  Well, nothing has happened since he‘s been on the court of appeals that would be considered controversial.  He‘s had very few opinions.  And so those people who voted for him on the court of appeals would have to switch their votes simply because of the position that he‘s going to be going into.

Now, he is not the most experienced candidate.  He has, however, two aspects that the White House truly wanted.  One is, he‘s ideologically consistent, and two is, he‘s very young.  I mean, this is a White House that, if they could, would have appointed a stem cell.  I mean, they want someone very young who‘s going to be on that court for decades.

OLBERMANN:  A stem cell?

TURLEY:  An ideologically consistent stem cell, yes.

OLBERMANN:  It‘s—I‘m sure that would not be something that they would put on the resume, as they sit him down before the Senate, would it?

TURLEY:  The—hello?  I‘m sorry, I didn‘t...

OLBERMANN:  I guess we‘re out of time.  Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley, Jon, thanks for your time tonight, appreciate it...

In the moments before we join Brian Williams for the president‘s official announcement of John Roberts as the would-be next member of the Supreme Court, I‘m joined by Kendall Coffey, former U.S. attorney for the southern district of Florida.  Mr. Coffey, good evening.  Thanks for your time.

KENDALL COFFEY, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY:  Hey, thanks for having me, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  All right, 15 names, at least, were floated at various times here seriously, 11, we understand from the White House, were actually considered, 5 were put into the form of interviewees, and John Roberts of the appeals court in the Washington district was selected.  What is your reaction to that selection?

COFFEY:  Well, I think he‘s really ignored short-term political advantage.  He‘s a second-term president.  He doesn‘t need to be concerned about gender or anything like that.  What I think the president has done is picked a jurist who can redefine this Court for decades to come.  We‘re not just talking about a single member, we‘re talking about replacing Sandra Day O‘Connor, the pivotal swing vote that really transforms the balance of power perhaps for many years to come.

This is a very, very talented, very conservative man who, from the standpoint of the president‘s long-term philosophy, probably represents the strongest choice possible.

OLBERMANN:  Given those four Senate votes to confirm him to the appeals court two years ago, the four Democratic votes in favor of him, and given the fact that he is 50 years old, and as you say, given the lifespan and the longevity of Supreme Court justices, he could influence this Court for literally decades, perhaps three of them, if not more—is there going to be more opposition to him on the part of the Democrats because of this potential for longevity?

COFFEY:  Well, not initially.  He‘s got such a limited track record of judicial experience, he‘s hard to attack.  I think what the strategy‘s going to be is to try to set the parameters for a confirmation hearing so that he can be aggressively questioned about a judicial philosophy that up to now is not really defined in written judicial opinions.  One of the many ironies of the process is you‘re really better off having 20 months of judicial experience, rather than 20 years, such as the other people who were being considered for this position.

OLBERMANN:  As Jonathan Turley said earlier, there was the brief that he wrote or authored or presented on behalf of the solicitor general‘s office regarding the believed-to-be mishandling of Roe v Wade—is that authorship of that or whether or not he simply signed onto it—is that, as Jonathan suggested, going to be the focus of the confirmation hearings, do you expect?

COFFEY:  It‘s certainly going to be one of the issues, but something that someone does as a lawyer for a client is clearly less conclusive than an opinion they might write as a judge.  So I think that what is especially, in many ways, well thought out about this choice is you‘ve got someone with rock-solid conservative credentials, impeccable Republican credentials, served in various administrations, clerked for Rehnquist, obviously, appointed to the federal appeals court bench by this judge (SIC), and yet who really is very hard to criticize.

OLBERMANN:  Kendall Coffey, former U.S. attorney, who presented Al Gore‘s case to the Supreme Court.  Mr. Coffey, again, great.  Thanks.

COFFEY:  Thank you.