Twenty-one years before the impeachment of President Trump, another impeachment scandal rocked the capitol. On Dec. 19, 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached in a bipartisan vote on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. It would not be the last we heard of Ken Starr, the prosecutor who rose to prominence investigating the Clinton case.
Starr, 73, was born in Vernon, Texas, and named “most likely to succeed” by his high-school classmates. He attended Harding University in Arkansas and as a member of the Young Democrats, participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Starr graduated from George Washington University in 1968 with a Bachelor of Arts in history. He later attained a law degree from Duke University.
On Sept. 13, 1983, President Ronald Reagan appointed Starr to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals and the Senate confirmed him a week later. He would later serve as the U.S. solicitor general under President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993.
In 1997, Starr was appointed to a special three-judge independent counsel tasked with investigating the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Neither Clinton was prosecuted.
Later that year, Starr, with the help of then-deputy Brett Kavanaugh, drafted a report on the death of White House counsel Vince Foster. Though right-wing groups suggested Foster’s death had been organized by the Clintons, Starr’s report dismissed the claims and labeled Foster’s death as a suicide.
Starr led the investigation that found Clinton’s semen on Monica Lewinsky’s “blue dress” and was instrumental in explaining the circumstances that led to Clinton’s impeachment.
“If you lie under oath, if you intimidate a witness, if you seek otherwise to obstruct the process of justice, it doesn’t matter who wins and who loses in the civil case,” Starr said of the Clinton. “What matters, from the criminal law’s perspective, is: Were crimes committed?”
Starr’s post-Clinton career was littered with controversial events and decisions. He provided pro bono services in an attempt to overturn the death sentence of Robin Lovitt in Virginia, defended the free speech rights of an Alaska teenager who unfurled a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner as the Olympic torch passed through Juneau, and defended sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during his 2007 statutory rape case in Palm Beach, Florida.
Starr became president of Baylor University on June 1, 2010. His tenure was marred by allegations that he had not investigated rape and sexual assault allegations filed by at least six women between 2009 and 2016. Starr “willingly accepted responsibility” and was removed as president in May 2014.
Recently, Starr has returned to headlines after claiming that special counsel Robert Mueller went on a “fishing expedition” in hopes of finding political dirt on President Trump. Starr is a recurring contributor for Fox News and said the evidence used to impeach Trump was “not even close” to overwhelming.
