Mike Lee

Mike Lee (born June 4, 1971, Mesa, Arizona, U.S.) is an American politician who was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2010 and began representing Utah in that body the following year.

Lee was born into a Mormon family, and, while he was still an infant, they moved to Utah, where his father, Rex Lee, became the first dean of the newly founded law school of Brigham Young University (BYU); the elder Lee also served as solicitor general (1981–85) in U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan’s administration. Mike studied political science (B.A., 1994) at BYU, where he served as student body president. During that time he married Sharon Burr, and the couple later had three children. After graduating from BYU’s law school in 1997, he served as a clerk for Samuel Alito at the Third Circuit Court of the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1998. Lee then worked in a Washington, D.C., firm before returning to Utah to serve as an assistant U.S. attorney (2002–05). In 2005 he became counsel to the governor, Jon Huntsman, but he left after a year to clerk again for Alito, who was now at the U.S. Supreme Court. Lee returned to private practice in 2007.

In 2010 Lee ran for the U.S. Senate, aligning himself with the Tea Party movement. He narrowly won the primary, but he easily defeated his Democratic opponent in the general election. After taking office in 2011, Lee followed a generally hard-right line, opposing entitlement programs and social welfare spending. He broke with the Republican Party leadership on numerous matters, especially those in which he believed the federal government was infringing on civil liberties. He notably voted against the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014, which allowed the government to detain without trial anyone—including U.S. citizens—suspected of fighting with al-Qaeda and other forces hostile to the United States. Lee also supported the government shutdown of 2013, along with many members of his party, but he opposed a deal that hastened its suspension following budgetary negotiations with the then Democratic majority leadership.

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During the presidential race in 2016, Lee refused to support the Republican nominee—and eventual winner—Donald Trump. That year Lee was easily reelected, and he continued to pursue a conservative—and at times libertarian—agenda, notably supporting Trump’s decision in 2017 to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, an international agreement to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Lee supported a number of the president’s other policies, such as a massive tax reform bill in 2017, and, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helped ensure the confirmation of the president’s Supreme Court nominees. However, he occasionally opposed Trump, perhaps most notably over presidential war powers. This was especially evident in January 2020, when he criticized Trump’s decision to order a drone strike on an Iranian general, amid growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Later that month the Senate began its trial of Trump, who had been impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for allegedly having withheld aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country into opening a corruption investigation into Joe Biden (in 2020 Biden became the Democratic presidential nominee). In February Lee voted against convicting Trump, and the president was acquitted by the Senate in a nearly party-line vote. Shortly thereafter an outbreak of COVID-19 became a worldwide pandemic. In October 2020 Lee announced that he had tested positive for the virus.

Lee’s books included Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America’s Founding Document (2015) and Written Out of History: The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government (2017).