Ken Starr, whose probe led to Bill Clinton impeachment, dies

In 2020, Kenneth Starr was recruited to the legal team representing Donald Trump in U.S.’s third presidential impeachment trial

Ken Starr, a former federal appellate judge and a prominent attorney whose criminal investigation of Bill Clinton led to the president’s impeachment, has died at age 76, his family said on Tuesday.

Mr. Starr died at a hospital Tuesday of complications from surgery, according to his former colleague, attorney Mark Lanier. He said Mr. Starr had been hospitalised in an intensive care unit in Houston for about four months.

In 2020, he was recruited to the legal team representing President Donald Trump in the nation’s third presidential impeachment trial.

For many years, Mr. Starr’s stellar reputation as a lawyer seemed to place him on a path to the Supreme Court. At age 37, he became the youngest person ever to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also had served. From 1989-93, Mr. Starr was the solicitor general in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, arguing 25 cases before the Supreme Court.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell remembered Starr Tuesday as “a brilliant litigator, an impressive leader, and a devoted patriot.”

Despite his impressive legal credentials, nothing could have prepared him for the task of investigating a sitting President.

In a probe that lasted five years, Mr. Starr looked into fraudulent real estate deals involving a long-time Clinton associate, delved into the removal of documents from the office of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster after his suicide and assembled evidence of Mr. Clinton’s sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern. Each of the controversies held the potential to do serious, perhaps fatal, damage to Mr. Clinton’s presidency.