Ken Starr, independent counsel in Clinton investigation, dies at 76

His spouse, Alice Starr, stated he had spent the previous 17 weeks at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Middle preventing an undisclosed sickness and died of issues of surgical procedure, however gave no additional particulars.

For a time, Ken Starr was a family identify, and his investigation into Clinton’s affair with a former White Home intern, Monica Lewinsky, propelled problems with intercourse, morality, accountability and beliefs to the middle of American life for greater than a 12 months.

He grew to become a Rorschach take a look at for the post-Chilly Conflict technology, a hero to his admirers for taking over whom they thought of an indecent president who despoiled the Oval Workplace and a villain to his detractors, who noticed him as a sex-obsessed Inspector Javert pushed by partisanship. His investigation examined the boundaries of the Structure when it prompted the primary impeachment of a president in 130 years and scarred Clinton’s legacy and his personal.

He returned to the general public stage in 2020 as a lawyer for President Donald Trump throughout his first Senate trial, this time taking the alternative aspect and denouncing what he referred to as “the Age of Impeachment” as a weapon in partisan wars. “Like battle, impeachment is hell,” he informed the Senate through the continuing that, like Clinton’s 21 years earlier, led to acquittal. “Or at the very least presidential impeachment is hell.”

Ken Starr testifies earlier than the Home Judiciary Committee in Washington on Nov. 19, 1998. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Occasions)

Nobody knew that higher than Starr, whose regular climb via the ranks of the conservative authorized world was upended by his sudden journey right into a presidential saga of intercourse, lies and audiotape. Starr served as a extensively revered appeals court docket decide and solicitor basic projected as a future Supreme Courtroom justice earlier than changing into a lightning rod through the Clinton investigation.

He went on to function dean of Pepperdine College’s legislation college in California and as president of Baylor College, however was demoted and later resigned from Baylor after an investigation discovered that the college had mishandled accusations of sexual assault towards members of the soccer workforce. The investigators rebuked the college management, saying it had “created a notion that soccer was above the foundations.”

Starr additionally drew criticism for representing billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein when he was accused of intercourse crimes towards younger ladies in Florida and finally made a plea settlement accepting solely minor expenses and a lightweight sentence.

In an e-mail she despatched to colleagues and associates of the household Tuesday, Alice Starr referred to as her husband a “good, variety and loving” man who, regardless of what his critics stated, “didn’t have a imply bone in his physique” and was a buddy to everybody he met.

Ken Starr speaks to reporters in Washington on Feb. 21, 1997. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Occasions)

“Ever since legislation college, he was decided to struggle for the rule of legislation, and he laboured tirelessly to supply equal justice and non secular freedom around the globe,” she wrote. “Ken felt compelled to at all times reply to the decision to serve his nation, even when it meant enduring harsh criticism for his service. He was brave and decided to work for a good and simply end result irrespective of the duty, and he by no means responded in variety to hurtful libel or slander.”

Starr was a mentor and boss to many future authorized stars, together with Chief Justice John Roberts, who labored for him in Ronald Reagan’s administration, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who labored within the impartial counsel’s workplace.

Each of them issued statements Tuesday mourning his loss of life. “Ken beloved our nation and served it with dedication and distinction,” Roberts stated. “He led by instance, within the authorized career, public service and the neighborhood.”

Kavanaugh added: “Fiercely dedicated to the Structure and to the USA, Choose Starr was an awesome lawyer, decide, scholar and instructor.”

Profiles in scumbaggery: Ken Starr and Brett Kavanaugh, 1996. [📸David Hume Kennerly/@GettyImages] pic.twitter.com/G1SWL01xGK

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) September 13, 2022

The episode that got here to outline Starr’s profession began out as an examination right into a misbegotten Arkansas actual property enterprise involving Clinton and his spouse, Hillary Clinton, referred to as Whitewater. Nevertheless it morphed into an totally completely different investigation with the invention that the president had carried on an affair with Lewinsky after which sought to cowl it up throughout an unrelated sexual harassment lawsuit. Starr’s investigation compelled Invoice Clinton to admit that he had lied, and in the end led to a contempt-of-court quotation towards the president and the give up of his legislation license.

In his memoir, “Contempt,” printed in 2018, twenty years after the sensational occasions of that period, Starr provided second ideas about pursuing Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky however condemned the previous president’s prevarications and what he referred to as his disrespect for the rule of legislation.

“I deeply remorse that I took on the Lewinsky part of the investigation,” he wrote. “However on the identical time, as I nonetheless see it 20 years later, there was no sensible different to my doing so.”

as i’m positive many can perceive, my ideas about ken starr deliver up sophisticated emotions… however of extra significance, is that i think about it’s a painful loss for individuals who love him.

— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) September 13, 2022

Requested afterward “CBS This Morning” what components he regretted, he stated, “I regretted the entire thing, but it surely needed to be accomplished.”

Youth

A minister’s son who offered Bibles door to door to pay for school, Kenneth Winston Starr was born July 21, 1946, in Vernon, Texas, and spent two years at Harding School, a Christian college in Searcy, Arkansas, now referred to as Harding College. He transferred to George Washington College, then earned a grasp’s diploma in political science from Brown College and a legislation diploma from Duke.

He married Alice Jean Mendell in 1970 one week earlier than beginning legislation college, they usually went on to have three youngsters and 9 grandchildren. He served as a legislation clerk for Chief Justice Warren Burger after which joined the Washington workplace of the legislation agency Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Starr was thought of good, bold and deeply conservative, a part of the vanguard of a brand new technology of authorized minds decided to reshape the judiciary after years wherein liberal jurists had dominated.

Ken Starr, whose investigation of former President Invoice Clinton led to an impeachment trial, has died.

In 1998, Morley Safer reported on Starr’s techniques whereas he was performing as particular Whitewater prosecutor. https://t.co/lOpfEpXpes pic.twitter.com/UaETCXetl0

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 13, 2022

He went to work as chief of employees to Legal professional Basic William French Smith within the Reagan administration and was then appointed by Reagan to the US Courtroom of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In one in all his most notable circumstances, he wrote the opinion in a 7-1 ruling throwing out a libel case filed by William Tavoulareas, the president of Mobil Oil, towards The Washington Publish. The newspaper was represented by David Kendall, who would go on to symbolize Clinton and cross knives with Starr through the Whitewater and Lewinsky investigations.

Starr stepped right down to turn out to be solicitor basic for President George H.W. Bush, a place typically referred to as the tenth justice. After Bush misplaced reelection to Clinton, Starr was assigned by Congress to guage the diaries of Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., who resigned after allegations of sexual misconduct. Over the course of his profession, he argued 36 occasions earlier than the Supreme Courtroom.

Whereas a companion at Kirkland & Ellis, Starr was appointed impartial counsel by a three-judge panel to analyze the Whitewater deal throughout Clinton’s time as governor of Arkansas. Starr additionally investigated the suicide of Vincent Foster, a White Home lawyer and longtime buddy of the Clintons’; the firing of White Home Journey Workplace employees; and the acquiring of confidential FBI information on Republican administration officers.

Ken Starr, then president and chancellor of Baylor College, stands through the nationwide anthem earlier than a soccer recreation on the college in Waco, Texas, on Oct. 11, 2014. (Cooper Neill/The New York Occasions)

He efficiently prosecuted various figures within the Clinton circles, together with Gov. Jim Man Tucker, Invoice Clinton’s successor in Arkansas, however by no means charged both of the Clintons. He believed Hillary Clinton had lied to investigators and his workplace did draft an indictment, however he concluded that it could not win a conviction and by no means pursued it.

His inquiry was wrapping up when he was informed that Invoice Clinton was looking for to impede a lawsuit filed by Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas authorities worker who accused him of sexual harassment. Linda Tripp, a buddy and colleague of Lewinsky’s on the Pentagon, had taped their conversations discussing the affair with Clinton and plans to cover it from Jones’ legal professionals.

With permission from Clinton’s legal professional basic, Janet Reno, Starr’s investigators confirmed the affair regardless of the president’s denials below oath within the Jones case in addition to his efforts to teach different potential witnesses to protect his indiscretions.

On this December 14, 1998 file picture Linda Tripp arrives on the workplaces of Judicial Watch, a public curiosity legislation agency, in Washington to present a deposition in a lawsuit in regards to the FBI information controversy. (AP, file)

The investigation performed out in exceedingly public trend, a tawdry, unseemly case that dominated the headlines for months with tales about thongs, cigars and a blue semen-stained costume. The general public was alternately captivated and horrified as a sitting president’s extramarital sexual adventures — and his deceptions about it — have been uncovered extra vividly than at any time in American historical past.

The report that Starr despatched to the Home, with the grounds part written partly by Kavanaugh, described the president’s encounters with Lewinsky in express, even excruciating element. Whereas it was not supposed to be launched unredacted, Home leaders made it public with out first studying it. The Starr Report, because it grew to become identified, each documented the case towards Clinton and generated sympathy for him due to its seeming excesses.

The Home impeached Clinton in December 1998, largely alongside get together traces, however the Senate acquitted him in February 1999, concluding that the president’s wrongdoing didn’t justify eradicating him from workplace.

Clinton was individually present in contempt of court docket and fined by a federal decide. In his last hours earlier than leaving workplace, Clinton struck a cope with Starr’s successor wherein the president admitted not telling the reality below oath, paid a positive and surrendered his legislation license.

However Starr grew to become “probably the most criticised man in America,” as he put it, the goal of Clinton allies and the punchline of late-night comedy sketches. “Half the nation beloved him. The opposite half loathed him,” Ken Gormley, the writer of a e-book in regards to the wrestle between Starr and Clinton, as soon as stated.

Ken Starr, then president and chancellor of Baylor College, embraces a member of the varsity’s soccer workforce earlier than a recreation in Waco, Texas, on Oct. 11, 2014. (Cooper Neill/The New York Occasions)

There was by no means any reconciliation between Starr and the Clintons. Throughout an interview in 2009, Invoice Clinton talked in regards to the varied one-time foes he had come to befriend or at the very least make peace with, together with Bush, Newt Gingrich, Rupert Murdoch and Richard Mellon Scaife. What about Starr, he was requested. “Properly,” Clinton stated, after which paused. “That’s one other kettle of fish.”

Certainly, when Starr reemerged two years in the past to defend Trump, Clinton’s allies didn’t maintain again. “Whether or not it was representing Large Tobacco, obsessing about President Clinton’s intercourse life or disgracing himself within the Baylor rape scandal, Ken Starr has at all times been on the mistaken aspect of historical past, ethics and customary decency,” Paul Begala, a former aide to Clinton, stated on the time.

However Starr’s associates and admirers at all times insisted that he was misunderstood by the general public and caricatured by the Clinton political machine. For all his notoriety, they noticed him as a genial, principled, skilled lawyer, who acted not out of animus however out of real dedication to what he thought was proper.

“Ken was a really variety and fantastic individual,” Elizabeth M. Locke, a lawyer and protegee from Kirkland & Ellis, stated Tuesday. “Opposite to a lot that has been written about him and the way in which he was portrayed within the wake of the Whitewater investigation, he was one of the vital light souls you’d ever know. And he was one of the vital moral legal professionals I’ve ever met.”

Along with his spouse, Starr is survived by a son, Randall P. Starr; two daughters, Carolyn S. Doolittle and Cynthia S. Roemer; a sister, Billie Jeayne Reynolds; and a brother, Jerry Starr.

(Written by Peter Baker)