Donald Trump Once Called Kenneth Starr a "Lunatic," Just the Guy for His Reality-TV Defense
January 20, 2020
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
Yes, Ken Starr, as a now former Fox “legal analyst,” helps fill out Trump’s dream team of assembling a legal defense team who are already celebrities, especially on Fox (on which they have made more than 350 appearances this year). More importantly, he represents how the Republicans have treated their governmental and judicial responsibilities as built upon the raw, brutal and duplicitous assertion of blunt power.
Admittedly, Starr had nothing to do with the hurry-up 5-4 Supreme Court decision that stole the 2000 election for George W. Bush. He also has had nothing to do with the current 5-4 right wing Supreme Court, led by a partisan John Roberts (although many pundits think he is concerned about his legacy) who is slow-walking Congressional cases demanding Trump administration compliance with the impeachment investigation to keep the House from obtaining records and testimony..
However, Starr, a member in good standing of the Federalist Society, was the useful tool for the raw, cruel and vindictive political persecution of both Bill and Hillary Clinton from 1994-1998. He was an Independent Counsel who spent tens of millions of dollars investigating the Clintons, ostensibly over Whitewater, but when they were cleared of wrongdoing with that land deal (they actually lost $40,000 on the transaction), Starr pursued Bill Clinton into entrapment over a sexual peccadillo. Along the way he used unchecked prosecutorial power and brute intimidation.
One needs to first of all understand that Starr was appointed in 1994 as an Independent Counsel to investigate the Whitewater land transaction and the suicide of Vince Foster, a top Clinton aide, and “TravelGate”. What’s vital to know is that there had been another Republican prosecutor, moderate Republican Robert Fiske, appointed by then Attorney General Reno, who was about to absolve the Clintons of any crimes and wrap up his work.
However, Congress passed a new law allowing for an Independent Counsel with oversight by a special three-judge division of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. As detailed in a July, 2002, BuzzFlash interview with Joe Conason, co-author with Gene Lyons, of the seminal “The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton.” Conason discussed that the right-wing made sure that a prosecutor would replace Fiske, one who would relentlessly pursue Bill Clinton until an impeachable offense could be found. It was a crusade in search of a crime, even if had to be manufactured, which it was.
Back in 2002, Conason told BuzzFlash about Starr’s calculated appointment to be the GOP’s hit man. Conason was talking about an infamous 1994 meeting when then far right-wing Senators Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth (both R-NC) met with David Sentelle, who headed the Special Division panel overseeing the Independent Counsel. They convinced him to fire Fiske and replace him with a Bible Thumping fringe right-wing former judge and big firm attorney without prosecution experience. Here is what Conason had to say:
What happened was very interesting, because it shows how determined the Republicans can be, and how far-sighted they often are when they're protecting their partisan interest. David Sentelle was put in the position to run the Special Division, which is a special court empowered under the Independent Counsel Act to select independent counsels and to oversee their work. Sentelle was a relatively inexperienced federal judge from North Carolina with extreme right-wing views, brought to power by Jesse Helms. He had been a big fundraiser for Ronald Reagan, which was a principal reason why he was appointed to the bench in the first place. Then he was chosen to run the Special Division by William Rehnquist, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Under the guidelines of the Independent Counsel Act, Rehnquist was supposed to select somebody of senior status, a very experienced judge. But the Act did not require him to do that. And David Sentelle was reliably right-wing. That was the only reason that Rehnquist picked Judge Sentelle, and Judge Sentelle proceeded to behave exactly as I think Rehnquist must have expected him to
So we had a far right-wing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court appoint a racist right-wing Sentelle (who was also horrifyingly racist), who was too junior to normally be given the position, to head the panel that oversees the then Independent Counsel’s office (it no longer exists; Mueller was a special counsel as was Fiske), and then someone whispers in his ear to appoint a Federalist Society dependable right-winger to pursue Clinton until he could be impeached.
However, after four years of ruthless pursuit, all Starr could up was a piffle he stumbled upon, that Bill Clinton lied about getting fellatio. For this he was impeached, and at the time, as most readers know, Lindsey Graham, who was then a House Congressman “Manager,” swore in high dudgeon that this amounted to “an abuse of power” and high crimes and misdemeanors.
In 1998, before the Lewinsky affair broke, The Washington Post published a timeline of “Inspector” Starr’s “hunting of a president.” It cannot be reiterated enough that this was a partisan pursuit to bring down a president by probing every aspect of his life. Starr, by 1997, had given up on finding any potential crimes by Bill Clinton, so he accepted the position of becoming the dean of Pepperdine Law School. But the GOP higher-ups had a leash on him and forced him to reverse himself and refuse the position to continue with “the investigation.”
Along the way, Starrn was assisted much of the time by Brett Kavanaugh as his deputy and who wrote much of the Starr Report (Kavanaugh was also an aggressive advocate of asking Clinton the most private of sexual details). Meanwhile, the full GOP team of henchmen and henchwomen (such as there are) were backing Starr’s inquisition 100%.
Of course, Clinton was acquitted, but Starr left many lives in ruins. Not only did he basically kidnap Monica Lewinsky and lock her up, without a lawyer, in a DC-area hotel room until she “confessed.” But he also wrecked lives with abandon. This included Susan McDougal, who BuzzFlash interviewed in February of 2003 and who endured Starr’s barbarism, being moved from prison to prison (including long stretches of solitary confinement), because she wouldn’t lie so Starr could build a case against Bill Clinton in exchange for leniency to her.
Starr comes off as a staid DC lawyer, but his self-righteousness has led him to be both brutal and unscrupulous in the name of preserving right-wing GOP power. And, of course, his piety and listening to religious hymns while he exercises didn’t prevent him from representing Jeffrey Epstein and helping him remain a pervert through a 2007 deal in Florida, that Trump’s former Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, signed off on.
Nor did it prevent him from overlooking sexual assaults and harassment when he was president and chancellor of Bayor University. In June of 2016, he was forced to resign after having been demoted from chancellor to just president, claiming that he was blissfully ignorant of rampant sexual assaults, particularly relating to the football team
Hypocrisy is a required characteristic to be in the high echelons of the Republican Party, so it’s no problem for the benighted Starr to be on Trump’s reality-TV defense team
The most important lessons from Starr’s history can be a useful tool for understanding the right-wing win-at-all-costs strategy, their lack of hesitancy to lie, conceal or betray.
BuzzFlash disagrees that Trump is worried that the impeachment will “stain” his presidency. He is just interested ,as are his Congressional henchmen and women, at holding onto power at all costs — and keeping the government in white Christian hands. Trump is currently viewing the impeachment, with expected acquittal, as something he can use to his advantage. He will wear it as a badge of honor, of how he is a victim and gin up his white grievance followers.
Look back at what the Democrats endured by playing by the rules. Bill Clinton signed the Independent Counsel law and he got impeached for it.
Al Gore won the 2000 election and lickety-split the 5-4 conservative majority on SCOTUS stopped the recount and declared Bush the winner.
Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election and has to put up with Trump mouthing off that she won the popular vote with fake voters.
Mitch McConnell with impunity holds up the Merrick Garland nomination to the Supreme Court, so Federalist Society stalwart and Starr protege Kavanaugh could get the seat.
Starr is an example of how the Republicans play:kick-you-in-the groin-football, smash you over the head with a 2 by 4, no rules matters but “ours” and you’re a wimp, you’re weak, you’re a snowflake. They are the party of the strong man, of anything is justifiable to preserve power, of the use of double standards as a means of not giving up power.
The Democrats, under the principled leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Adam Schif, have been strategic, cogent and succinct spokespersons during the impeachment process. But Trump doesn’t give a damn about the facts. His audience is his base and the swing voters for 2020.
Starr is part of the Fox Spectacle of “alternative facts.” More evidence will not likely change the outcome. The Republicans are going to try and bludgeon their way into forming a dominating alternative narrative that blots out the evidence. That is their goal
Trump and the Grand Hypocrisy Party want to win the whole poker pot. They’ll kick you in the shins and expect a thank you.
It’s time for the Democrats to acknowledge that the facts are not going to be enough to prevail. They are going to have to play hardball to win the 2020 election. They are going to have to blow off some knee caps, not just play by rhe rules. Just look at what Starr did over four years of mercilessly pursing Bill Clinton. In that perverse sense, he is a role model of how important it is to fight back hard and without regret against the Republican mob family.
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