Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 192
November Surprises
Former independent counsel Ken Starr said that he has not seen President Trump commit any offense that is “even close” to being impeachable, The Hill reports.
Said Starr: “Not even close. I know of no evidence … that would suggest that Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Former independent counsel Ken Starr told MSNBC that he thinks the president can be indicted, but that current Justice Department policy will not allow it.
Said Starr: “I think the president can be indicted, but that is not the position of the Justice Department traditionally, going back to the Nixon-Ford era and continuing through President Clinton’s tenure.”
NPR runs an excerpt from Ken Starr’s Contempt: A Memoir of the Clinton Investigation.
“Our team dubbed the operation ‘Prom Night.’ Fresh from the gym, wearing purple sweats, Monica arrived. After Monica and Linda had chatted for a short time in the lobby, by predesign Steve Irons and several other FBI agents swept in. Identifying themselves, they did not place Monica under arrest, but simply invited her and Tripp to accompany them.”
“Our team of prosecutors awaited the women’s arrival in two adjoining hotel rooms on the tenth floor. I was standing by in my office. When they arrived upstairs, Monica turned on Tripp in a fury. She realized she’d been set up.”
“On Christmas Eve 1998, five days after the House impeached President Bill Clinton, Brett Kavanaugh urged his boss — Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel — not to pursue a criminal indictment of Mr. Clinton until after he left office,” the New York Times reports.
“Judge Kavanaugh, now President Trump’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, delivered the advice in a private memorandum made public on Friday by the National Archives in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.”
“I do think it is a, certainly a serious matter when a special counsel is accused—and I was accused of that—of exceeding his or her authority. That’s a serious matter because we do not want investigators and prosecutors out on a fishing expedition.”
— Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, interviewed on CNN.
Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr writes in the Washington Post:
Subject to the possibility of being fired for ‘good cause,’ Mueller should be allowed to do his work unhindered and unimpeded. Absent the most extreme circumstances, the president would be singularly ill-advised to threaten, much less order, Mueller’s firing. Under legally binding regulations, the special counsel’s fate rests exclusively with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. He alone is empowered to make that fateful decision. As a matter of honor, and in light of his sworn testimony before Congress, Rosenstein would inevitably resign if confronted with a White House directive to dismiss the special counsel. Wisdom counsels strongly against unleashing a 21st-century version of the Saturday Night Massacre of Watergate-era infamy.
“The captain goes down with the ship.”
— Ken Starr, in an interview with ESPN, on resigning as chancellor of Baylor University in the wake of a sexual assault scandal.
Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who delivered a report that served as the basis for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, was demoted by Baylor University, where he had served as president and chancellor, after an investigation found “fundamental failure” by the university in its handling of accusations of sexual assault against football players, the New York Times reports.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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