The former special counsel in the investigation against former US President Bill Clinton is dead. Prominent lawyer Kenneth Starr died Tuesday at a Texas hospital at the age of 76 from complications of an operation, his family said.
Former federal judge Starr and the government’s chief litigant before the Supreme Court was particularly well known for his dogged investigations into Clinton in the 1990s. In his investigative report, he detailed the Democratic president’s sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky in painstaking detail. It was Starr’s mission to bring down the President, and he pursued that mission with great zeal.
Ultimately, his polarizing report was more a character study of Clinton than a catalog of criminal offenses. Starr’s investigations led to the indictment in Congress and an impeachment trial against the president for alleged false testimony. At the end of the trial in 1999, however, even some Republican senators voted against impeachment, Clinton was acquitted and remained president.
In 2020, Starr found himself in the middle of an impeachment trial again, but this time on the other side. Then-Republican President Donald Trump enlisted Starr’s support in his second congressional impeachment trial and included him on his defense team.
Trump: “He’s crazy”
Trump didn’t think much of Starr in the past. “He’s a madman,” Trump said in 1999, the year of Clinton’s impeachment trial, “a disaster.” That was a widespread view in the Democratic camp, which Trump was closer to than the Republican at the time. As Republican President, Trump apparently took a liking to Starr when he repeatedly defended him against allegations on Fox News. Like Clinton, Trump did not get the necessary majority for a guilty verdict at the end of the Senate impeachment trial.
Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed sadness at Starr’s death, stating, “He was a brilliant lawyer, a formidable leader, and a staunch patriot.”