Former independent counsel Ken Starr said the impeachment inquiry into President Trump is “doomed to fail.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the formal investigation on Tuesday in response to the ongoing controversy surrounding Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the conversation the president asked Zelensky to investigate 2020 front-runner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, over his work with an energy company in Ukraine.
“Impeachment is doomed to fail given what we know,” Starr told Fox News on Saturday. “Now, obviously the facts are flowing in. In the history of the country, obviously presidential efforts to impeach do not work, that we know,” began the independent counsel who has a major figure in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998.
“But guess what, of the 62 impeachment proceedings … eight have resulted in convictions,” he continued. “This is not going to result in a conviction, and so why are we on the impeachment train? We should be on the oversight train and quit calling it impeachment since there is something profoundly wrong under our Constitution to call it impeachment that we are on a formal impeachment inquiry.”
Starr went on to denounce the president’s conversation but maintained that it was not an impeachable offense.
“He used a word that was very, very long: reciprocity. We need reciprocity, I’m embellishing even on that. But that’s not a crime. That is not a crime. It is poor judgment by the president. He should not have done that. He’s making the tie and I don’t think it is a crime,” he went on.
