Ken Starr, the former judge and attorney whose ‘Whitewater’ criminal investigation into Bill Clinton led to the president’s impeachment, has died.
Mr. Starr, 76, was nominated by former President Ronald Reagan for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Washington, DC Circuit, and served as the United States Attorney General under President George HW Bush.
But he is best known for his five-year investigation into President Clinton which looked at fraudulent real estate transactions involving a longtime Clinton associate, delved into the removal of documents from the office of White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster after he committed suicide and collected gather evidence of Clinton’s sexual relationships with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern. .
The investigation into Clinton’s intimate relationship with Lewinsky was a spectacle in Washington.
In 1995, Lewinsky came to work at the White House as an intern, and later that year, she and Clinton had an affair in the hallway near the Oval Office, the first of 10 sexual encounters. for the next year and a half.
President Clinton finally spoke live nationally on TV from the White House and admitted to having an affair with Monica Lewinsky
Ms Lewinsky confided the affair with a colleague, Linda Tripp, who recorded some of their conversations and gave the tapes to Mr. Starr’s prosecutors.
Ms Lewinsky was granted immunity from prosecution and became Mr. Starr’s main witness against the president, who has denied “having a sexual relationship” with her.
In a bitter end to his investigation into the still-more-criticizing Lewinsky affair, Mr. Starr submitted a report, required by law, to the US House of Representatives.
In it, he concluded the president lied, engaged in obstruction of justice, and followed a pattern of conduct “inconsistent with the president’s constitutional duty to faithfully obey the law.”
The Clinton-Lewinsky affair is famous around the world
The White House has branded Mr. Starr as a right-wing fanatic running a Republican bid to destroy the president.
House Republicans used his report as a roadmap in impeaching the president, who was eventually acquitted in a Senate trial.
In 2020, Starr was recruited to help represent President Trump in the nation’s third impeachment trial.
In a memorable statement to Congress during that impeachment trial, Mr Starr said: “We are living in what I think can be aptly described as the ‘age of impeachment’.”
He said that “like war, impeachment is hell, or at least impeachment of the president is hell”.
Mr. Starr’s family said he passed away Tuesday in Houston, Texas, from complications following surgery.
