Ken Starr, the prosecutor on the Clinton Whitewater investigation, has died at 76.
Kenneth Starr, the person who led the Whitewater investigation into Bill and Hillary Clinton during the 1990s, died Tuesday at a hospital in Houston due to complications from surgery, his family said. He was 76.
Starr was born in 1946 in a small town in Texas. After he finished law school at Duke University, he started working in the legal field in the nation’s capital. He was a law clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in the 1970s, and then he was appointed to be a federal judge by the Reagan administration in 1983. Later, he served as the solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush.
Starr was in the news often in the 1990s because a group of judges asked him to look into the Clintons’ real estate investments from when Bill Clinton was first getting into politics in Arkansas.
Starr was given permission to investigate a lot of things. The investigation was supposed to be about Whitewater, but it ended up being about a lot of other things too.
The Clintons were never charged, but an investigation by Starr took place over many years. This looked into the death of a White House attorney, the firing of White House travel agents and the possible misuse of FBI files.
Starr’s investigation started with Clinton’s sexual harassment lawsuit from an Arkansas government employee named Paula Jones.
As part of studying Clinton, Starr investigated Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and the president’s testimony in a sworn deposition about his conduct with her.
Starr’s report to Congress in 1998 said that there were 11 reasons why Clinton should be impeached, including lying under oath, not letting justice happen, and using power in a way that was not fair. The report eventually led to Clinton being impeached, but he was not found guilty by the Senate and he finished his term as president.
Starr said he was sorry for the part of the investigation that looked into Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He wrote that he did not feel like he had a choice in the matter.
This is a photo of Ken Starr from September 12, 2015. He is Baylor’s president and is waiting to run onto the football field in Waco, Texas.
Baylor University’s former President, Ken Starr, waits to run out on to the field before an NCAA college football game on September 12th, 2015, in Waco, Texas.
In 2010, Starr joined Baylor University as the school’s president and chancellor. Under his guidance, the university opened a $250 million football stadium.
Baylor President Linda A. Livingstone said in a statement on Tuesday that Judge Starr was a dedicated public servant and ardent supporter of religious freedom.
Starr left the university because he was being investigated for not dealing with sexual assault allegations involving the football team properly.
In 2016, The Wall Street Journal found out that at least 17 women had said that 19 football players had sexually assaulted them or had domestic violence issues since 2011. The reports also said that there were 4 times when football players were accused of gang rape.
An internal investigation at Baylor University showed that officials failed to follow Title IX and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which are meant to prevent campus sexual violence.
Starr said that in a 2018 interview with NPR that he never knew about the Baylor scandal and that he only focused on student safety.
I have known Ken Starr for over four decades in many capacities – as Judge Starr, Dean Starr, President Starr, and Uncle Ken – but most importantly, he was a dear friend. He was a great friend to me and my family, our firm, our clients, American justice, and world justice. The world has lost a great man, and everyone is rightfully mourning his death.
We are very sad that our kind and loving father and grandfather has died. We admired him for how hard he worked, but he always made his family a priority.
Sonya Spencer is a news reporter for ABC News. She has covered major stories such as the 9/11 attacks, the war in Iraq, and the 2016 presidential election.