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From Clinton investigator to Trump impeachment defender: The life of controversial attorney Ken Starrhttps://www.businessinsider.in/slideshows/miscellaneous/from-clinton-investigator-to-trump-impeachment-defender-the-life-of-controversial-attorney-ken-starr/slidelist/73503445.cms2020-01-22T02:59:40+05:30

From Clinton investigator to Trump impeachment defender: The life of controversial attorney Ken Starr

Jan 22, 2020, 02:59 IST

Kenneth Winston Starr was born on July 21, 1946 in Vernon, Texas, a small town near the Oklahoma border. He was the son of a Christian minister and sold bibles door-to-door to pay for college.

Starr got his BA from George Washington University in 1968, his MA from Brown in 1969, and his law degree from Duke in 1973.

While initially identifying as a Kennedy Democrat, he changed parties after serving an internship on Capitol Hill, according to the Washington Post.

In his early career, Starr clerked for both David W. Dyer, judge for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court Justice Warren E. Burger. He later made partner at two prestigious law firms and served as solicitor general under the first President Bush.

In 1994, Starr was pulled out of private practice to take over the independent counsel Whitewater investigation into President Bill Clinton's business dealings as an Arkansas politician. The investigation later expanded to include the president's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Starr's investigations into the affair caused some controversy. Republicans felt he was holding Clinton accountable. Democrats felt he was too influenced by his personal politics.

Starr's report on Clinton caused the House of Representatives to vote to impeach the president on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. But he was acquitted in a Senate trial in 1999.

While he was once considered a top candidate for the Supreme Court, that talk seemed to die down after Clinton's impeachment.

After resigning from the Clinton investigation in 1999, Starr returned to private practice and launched an academic career as well. In 2004, he was appointed dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law.

It was also around this time that he was hired, along with his Trump co-counsel Alan Dershowitz, to represent Jeffrey Epstein in a sex abuse case in Florida. Epstein's lawyers saved him from going to court, and he served just a few months in county jail.

Starr became the president of Baylor University in 2010 but was fired six years later amid a campus scandal involving sexual assault. A report found that the school didn't do enough to address serious rape allegations concerning football players.

According to the Washington Post, leaving his job at Baylor allowed Starr the time to write "Contempt," his memoir of his time working on the Whitewater investigation.

In recent years, Starr returned to private practice, joining the Lanier Law Firm in 2018. He has also become one of President Trump's fiercest defenders in regular appearances on Fox News.

This is despite the fact that President Trump called Starr a "lunatic" and a "wacko" during and after the Clinton investigation.

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