Starr Report
Initially chosen as Independent Counsel in 1994, and charged with investigating Bill and Hillary Clinton's pre-presidency financial dealings with the Whitewater Land Company,[1] Ken Starr, with the approval of Attorney General Janet Reno, conducted a wide-ranging investigation of alleged abuses including the firing of White House travel agents, the alleged misuse of FBI files, and Clinton's conduct while he was a defendant in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a former Arkansas state government employee, Paula Jones.
In the course of the investigation, Linda Tripp provided Starr with taped phone conversations in which Monica Lewinsky, a former White House Intern, discussed having oral sex with the president.
Seven months later, on August 17, Clinton faced a federal grand jury, convened by Ken Starr, to consider whether the president committed perjury in his January deposition, or otherwise obstructed justice, in the Jones case.
[2] The Office of the Independent Counsel concluded its four-year-long investigation of the president soon after Clinton's grand jury testimony, and on September 9, 1998, delivered its report to the House Judiciary Committee.
[7] In the report's introduction, Starr asserted that Clinton had lied under oath during a sworn deposition on January 17, 1998, while he was a "defendant in a sexual harassment lawsuit" and "to a grand jury."
Starr also alleged that Clinton had conversations with witnesses during his investigation which he ascribed as "witness-tampering and obstruction of justice by hiding evidence and giving misleading accounts to lawyers for Paula Jones.
President Clinton endeavored to obstruct justice by helping Ms. Lewinsky obtain a job in New York at a time when she would have been a witness harmful to him were she to tell the truth in the Jones case.
The President improperly tampered with a potential witness by attempting to corruptly influence the testimony of his personal secretary, Betty Currie, in the days after his civil deposition.
[9] Two of the three parts of the definition of "sexual relations" described by Jones' attorneys during her lawsuit had been ruled out by presiding Judge Susan Webber Wright as "too broad" and legally unacceptable.
[9] The report alleged that Clinton considered oral sex to be a form of sexual relations and that the relationship between him and Lewinsky lasted longer than the date he described, but presented nothing relevant to back its claims.
[9] Clinton also denied ever seeing such an intimate note and the Secret Service WAVES records showed Lewinsky did not visit the White House on any given date in 1998.
[9] The report also alleged Clinton's job offer to Lewinsky was an attempt to keep her from admitting the relationship to the public and thus obstruct justice, but had nothing relevant to back this claim either.
[9] Starr also claimed that Clinton simultaneously delayed testimony for seven months and lied to potential grand jury witnesses by publicly denying the relationship, and thus committed a criminal felony by refusing to testify.
[9] Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote the majority opinion, had also stated that any case with merit, the prospect of an appeal would be granted.
[9] In January 2020, while testifying as a defense lawyer for U.S. President Donald Trump during his Senate impeachment trial, Starr himself would retract some of the allegations he made in the report.
[13] Slate journalist Jeremy Stahl pointed out that as he was urging the Senate not to remove Trump as president, Starr contradicted various arguments he used in 1998 to justify Clinton's impeachment.
