Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated former President Bill Clinton, said President Trump’s attorney general nominee should not be forced to recuse himself from overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Some Democrats have pushed for William Barr to step aside if he is confirmed to the top spot at the Justice Department, citing a 19-page legal memorandum he authored over the summer concluding Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey could not constitute an obstruction of justice.
Starr argued in an opinion piece published by the New York Times on Thursday that the memorandum was merely meant to warn of “the inherent danger of prosecutorial overreach.”
“Firing James Comey, the F.B.I. director, may have been wise or unwise, but it should not in conscience be stretched to accuse a sitting president of criminal conduct. Nor should the mere expression of hope that Mr. Comey would go easy on Mr. Trump’s embattled national security adviser, Michael Flynn, somehow be transmogrified into a violation of federal law,” he wrote.
Starr continued, “Holding the president accountable for the exercise of his powers under Article II of the Constitution is a task entrusted to Congress, not to a largely unaccountable special counsel.”
Barr admitted this week he shared the memo with the Justice Department as well as several lawyers connected to Trump, but he said it was based solely on public information about the investigation.
Democrats pressed Barr on his criticisms of the Mueller investigation, which he would oversee if confirmed by the Senate, at his confirmation hearing earlier this week. Trump’s nominee assured Democrats that he would allow the special counsel to complete the investigation.
“In light of what we know, I see no reason he should step aside. Expressing his legal perspective on a legal theory of obstruction of justice should not come close to justifying the extraordinary action of requiring him to recuse himself from what will be one of the new attorney general’s most pressing responsibilities,” Starr wrote.
