Lawyer Ken Starr rides again: Look out, Mr. President!
January 20, 2020 by Staff
Filed under News, Politics, Weekly Columns
(Akiit.com) Just when I thought nothing could become even more bizarre, President Donald J. Trump‘s so-called legal team, led by Jay Sekulow, has recruited Ken Starr and Robert Ray, independent counsels during the Clinton years, to lead the defense of The Donald during the looming impeachment trial. Joining the legal team as well is retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Notably absent from the legal team is Rudy Giuliani, the president’s private legal counsel during the Russian collusion witch hunt of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Giuliani, not coincidentally, is the culprit, through his inebriated bad judgment, who played a key role, along with his now-indicted colleague Lev Parnas, in negligently getting the president into this impeachment quagmire. In the words of Laurel and Hardy, “A fine mess you have gotten me into, Ollie.”
Here is how the left Friday was playing the selection of these lawyers, which is the equivalent of golf’s President’s Cup, only this time the American people could get screwed. Our world-class pro golfers at least prevailed for the red, white and blue in last month’s match play tournament in Australia. The question is, legal acumen aside, will the president’s legal team fare as well, given the politics inherent in the impeachment trial?
Here is what the venomous leftist Fake News outlet CNBC had to say about President Trump’s selections, not wasting a beat to trash our commander in chief by linking him to Jeffrey Epstein and O.J. Simpson, and indirectly and falsely portraying him as a sexual predator.
“President Trump’s impeachment defense team will include Ken Starr, whose investigation led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. …
“Dershowitz’s past clients include the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and O.J. Simpson. …
“More recently, Dershowitz has been known for his defense of Trump on television and for his past work for Epstein, a wealthy investor who was charged by federal prosecutors in New York last summer with child sex trafficking. …
“Starr also had represented Epstein when he was under investigation in the mid-2000s in Florida by federal and state authorities for sexual misconduct with young women and girls.
“Epstein, a former friend of Trump and Bill Clinton, avoided federal prosecution in that earlier investigation. But he pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges that included paying for sex with a minor.
“He served 13 months in jail, although he was allowed out for many hours each day on work release.
“Starr, a former federal appeals court judge, oversaw the wide-ranging Whitewater investigation of President Clinton from 1994 through 1998.
“Starr’s findings that Clinton had lied under oath by denying a sexual harassment relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky led to Clinton’s impeachment by the Republican-led House in late 1998. …
“On Friday morning, shortly after news about Starr joining Trump’s legal team broke, Lewinsky wrote in a Twitter post: ‘this is definitely an “are you f–-ing kidding me?” kinda day.’
“More recently, Starr lost his job as president of Baylor University, and soon quit as chancellor and law professor, after claims that the Texas school had grossly botched its handling of cases where female students said they were raped or sexually abused.
“Starr’s wife declined to comment when contacted by CNBC.”
[Tucker Higgins, Brian Schwartz and Dan Mangan, “Trump Impeachment defense team will include Clinton prosecutor Ken Starr and Jeffrey Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz,” CNBC, Jan. 17, 2020].
I do not hold it against Starr or Dershowitz that they provided legal defense to very bad people, but what I do question is why it was necessary to allow Starr in particular to be legal counsel at the impeachment trial – for a number of reasons:
First, Starr is the one who triggered the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, giving fodder to Democrats who want to say that this contrived and phony impeachment of President Trump is somehow justified. Just look at what the president’s lawyer hypocritically did to Clinton, they will spew.
Second, Starr is not suited to wage a strong defense if the past is a prologue. He is a weak-kneed appellate lawyer who does not know how to try cases, much less take strong positions. During the Clinton years, he was eaten up alive by the Clintons’ lawyer David Kendall of Williams & Connolly, who handed Starr’s head to him on a plate. And, what Starr triggered did not even succeed in getting Slick Willy convicted.
Third, Starr lacks the courage of his own convictions, pun intended. After he was accused of covering up sexual harassment scandals as the chancellor of Baylor University, where he sought “exile” after the Lewinsky fiasco, he later apologized to the Clintons for even his failed work as independent counsel.
Fourth, Starr is almost universally disliked by the left, center and right. To the left he tried, however incompetently, to bring down President Clinton, and to the right he is an “accomplished loser.” The middle sees him as simply a fool. I share the views of the right and middle, my having tried to help Starr during the Clinton years and he having thought himself too holier than thou and “Republican establishment pure “to take me up on the offer, before he and his “high flying staff,” which included now Justice Brett Kavanaugh, went down in flames.
As much as I love and support the president, just as was true of the ill-conceived selection of Rudy Giuliani, he needs to think more clearly about who should legally represent him in what will be by all accounts the fight of his political life. If he does not win this fight, the nation will go down for the count with him, and the senile likes of Joe Biden or the socialist likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will be poised to win the presidency and wreak havoc if not totally destroy the vision and creation of our Founding Fathers.
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Columnist; Larry Klayman
Official website; https://twitter.com/LarryEKlayman