# Ken Starr **Kenneth Winston Starr** (July 21, 1946 – September 13, 2022) was the independent counsel whose investigation of [[Bill Clinton]] produced the [[Starr Report]] and the 1998 impeachment. Before that he was a federal appeals judge and Solicitor General. Late in life he defended [[Donald Trump]] in Trump's first impeachment trial. He was a pillar of the [[Federalist Society]] legal network. His career connects three things the vault tracks: the independent-counsel statute as a partisan weapon, the Scaife-funded campaign against the Clintons, and the conservative legal pipeline that later produced a Supreme Court justice. ## Career | Years | Role | |---|---| | 1983–89 | Judge, D.C. Circuit (Reagan appointee); at 37 the youngest on the court | | 1989–93 | Solicitor General under George H. W. Bush; argued 25 cases | | 1994–99 | [[Independent Counsel]], Whitewater and then Lewinsky | | 2004–10 | Dean, Pepperdine law school | | 2010–16 | President of Baylor University | | 2020 | Trump's defense team in the first impeachment trial | ## The investigation A special three-judge panel appointed Starr on **August 5, 1994** to replace Robert Fiske, the Whitewater counsel chosen by Attorney General Janet Reno. The panel later widened his mandate to the Monica Lewinsky matter. He delivered his report to Congress on **September 9, 1998**: 453 pages listing 11 possible grounds for impeachment, including perjury, obstruction, witness tampering and abuse of power. The investigation, finished by his successor Robert Ray in 2002, cost about **$70 million** over six years. **[[Brett Kavanaugh]]** was one of Starr's lawyers. He wrote the section of the report laying out the case for impeachment, proposed graphic questions for Clinton in an August 1998 memo, and drafted the report on Vince Foster's death (see [[Vince Foster Suicide Conspiracy]]). Twenty years later the same lawyer was confirmed to the Supreme Court. ## The Scaife connection Starr's critics argued he was too close to the people funding the case against Clinton. [[Richard Mellon Scaife]] spent roughly $2 million to $2.4 million (sources differ) between 1993 and 1997 through the *[[American Spectator]]*'s **[[Arkansas Project]]**, which dug for dirt on the Clintons. Scaife had also given more than $1 million to set up Pepperdine's public-policy school. In 1996 Starr accepted deanships there, then withdrew in 1998 as the probe expanded, saying he had "no arrangement" with Scaife. ## Baylor Baylor's board removed Starr as president on **May 26, 2016** after the Pepper Hamilton law firm's review of how the university handled sexual-assault reports, including reports against football players. He resigned as chancellor on June 1 ("The captain goes down with the ship") and left the faculty that August. ## Epstein From 2007 Starr was on [[Jeffrey Epstein]]'s legal team. In 2008, as Epstein's lawyers fought the terms of the non-prosecution agreement reached with [[Alex Acosta]]'s office, Starr pressed senior Justice Department officials, including in a letter to the newly confirmed Deputy Attorney General, Mark Filip. Emails released by the House Oversight Committee on November 12, 2025 show the two still in touch in 2018, with one message signed "Hugs, Ken" (one source). ## See Also - [[Starr Report]] · [[Independent Counsel]] · [[Clinton Impeachment]] · [[Reports Hub]] - [[Arkansas Project]] · [[American Spectator]] · [[Richard Mellon Scaife]] · [[Vince Foster Suicide Conspiracy]] - [[Brett Kavanaugh]] · [[Federalist Society]] · [[Jeffrey Epstein]] · [[Bill Clinton]]