Ann Hart Coulter (ˈkoʊltɚ; born December 8, 1961) is an American conservative media pundit, author, syndicated columnist, and lawyer. She became known as a media pundit in the late 1990s, appearing in print and on cable news as an outspoken critic of the Clinton administration. Her first book concerned the impeachment of Bill Clinton and sprang from her experience writing legal briefs for Paula Jones's attorneys, as well as columns she wrote about the cases. Coulter's syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate appears in newspapers and is featured on conservative websites. Coulter has also written 13 books.
Ann Hart Coulter was born on December 8, 1961, in New York City, to John Vincent Coulter (1926–2008), an FBI agent from a working class Catholic Irish American and German American family in Albany, New York, and Nell Husbands Coulter (née Martin; 1928–2009), who was born in Paducah, Kentucky.
Coulter's mother's ancestry has been traced back on both sides of her family to a group of Puritan settlers in Plymouth Colony, British America arriving on the Griffin with Thomas Hooker in 1633, and her father's family were Catholic Irish and German immigrants who arrived in America in the 19th century. Her father's Irish ancestors emigrated during the famine—and became ship laborers, tilemakers, brickmakers, carpenters and flagmen. Coulter's father attended college on the GI Bill, and would later idolize Joseph McCarthy.
She has two older brothers: James, an accountant, and John, an attorney. Her family later moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Coulter and her two brothers were raised. Coulter graduated from New Canaan High School in 1980.
While attending Cornell University, Coulter helped found The Cornell Review, and was a member of the Delta Gamma national sorority. She graduated cum laude from Cornell in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and received her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1988, where she was an editor of the Michigan Law Review.