Lauren Victoria Burke / AP
In this May 8, 2014, file photo, Baylor University President Ken Starr testifies at the House Committee on Education and Workforce on college athletes forming unions, in Washington. Starr was appointed in 1994 to replace special counsel Robert Fiske in the Whitewater investigation, which expanded to examine the suicide death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster and accusations of sexual misconduct by Bill Clinton.
Thursday, March 22, 2018 | 6:40 p.m.
The special counsel whose investigation led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment told an audience at UNLV today that he’d seen no sign of collusion involving President Donald Trump in the current investigation into the Trump administration.
Ken Starr said indictments against Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Russian individuals and other Trump associates contained no evidence of collusion.
“So was there collusion?” Starr said. “What Robert Mueller and his team know, for us, is a black box. We just don’t know.”
That being the case, Starr declined to offer a prediction on the investigation’s outcome.
“My crystal ball is very cloudy, so I’m not going to guess as to what’s going to happen,” he said. “We don’t know what Bob Mueller knows, his team knows, and what they may know tonight that they don’t know now.”
Starr did offer an opinion about what would happen if Mueller were fired, however.
“I think that would be seen as a Saturday night massacre that would likely launch a serious conversation of impeachment,” he said, referring to President Richard Nixon’s firing of independent special counsel Archibald Cox during the Watergate investigation.
Starr spoke for about an hour to UNLV law school faculty, students, alums and guests, focusing on the history of presidential investigations and offering suggestions on how the process could be improved.
Still a practicing lawyer who also serves as a guest commentator on several news programs, Starr was appointed in 1994 to replace special counsel Robert Fiske in the Whitewater investigation, which expanded to examine the suicide death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster and accusations of sexual misconduct by Bill Clinton.
After Clinton’s sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was revealed in 1997, Starr’s investigation into the matter led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives on two charges in 1998. The Senate acquitted Clinton of those charges in early 1999.
Starr has largely been complimentary toward Mueller, but has said Mueller should have vetted his team better to weed out those with anti-Trump bias. However, he also said it was impossible to take politics completely out of special investigations.
In January, Starr also told ABC’s “This Week” that if Trump lied to the American public about whether he attempted to fire Mueller, the special counsel should investigate that as an impeachable offense.
“Lying to the American people is a serious issue that has to be explored,” he said on the program. “I take lying to the American people very, very seriously, so absolutely.”
But Starr has said he believes investigations like the current one involving Trump would be best conducted by Congress, not a special counsel.
“I think we've had so many unhappy experiences with independent counsels or special counsels. The Republicans hated the Iran-Contra investigation. The Democrats hated Whitewater and Lewinsky that I conducted. The best way to address issues of misconduct other than the kind of criminality such as the president was bribed — those are the kinds of things that I think are entrusted to the criminal laws,” he told NPR. “I think when we're talking about the kinds of issues — was there collusion with the Russians and so forth? — to me, that's a political question.
