38 Facts About Ken Starr

1.

Kenneth Winston Starr was an American lawyer and judge who authored the Starr Report, which led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

2.

Ken Starr headed an investigation of members of the Clinton administration, known as the Whitewater controversy, from 1994 to 1998.

3.

Ken Starr was initially appointed to investigate the suicide of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster and the Whitewater real estate investments of Clinton.

4.

Ken Starr served as the dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law.

5.

Ken Starr was later both the president and the chancellor of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, from June 2010 until May and June 2016, respectively, and at the same time the Louise L Morrison chair of constitutional law at Baylor Law School.

6.

On January 17,2020, Ken Starr joined President Donald Trump's legal team during his first impeachment trial.

7.

Ken Starr's father was a minister in the Churches of Christ who worked as a barber.

8.

In 1970, Ken Starr married Alice Mendell, who was raised Jewish but converted to Christianity.

9.

Ken Starr later transferred to George Washington University, in Washington, DC, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in history, in 1968.

10.

Ken Starr worked in the Southwestern Advantage entrepreneurial program and later attended Brown University, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in 1969.

11.

Ken Starr then attended the Duke University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Duke Law Journal and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1973.

12.

Ken Starr was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 20,1983, and received his commission on September 20,1983.

13.

Ken Starr encountered strong resistance from the Department of Justice leadership, which feared Starr might not be reliably conservative as a Supreme Court justice.

14.

Ken Starr considered running for the United States Senate, from Virginia in 1994, against incumbent Chuck Robb, but opted against opposing Oliver North for the Republican nomination.

15.

Ken Starr replaced Robert B Fiske, a moderate Republican who had been appointed by attorney general Janet Reno.

16.

Scaife's reporter on the Whitewater matter, Christopher Ruddy, was a frequent critic of Ken Starr's handling of the case.

17.

In 2004, Ken Starr expressed regret for ever having asked the Department of Justice to assign him to oversee the Lewinsky investigation personally, saying, "the most fundamental thing that could have been done differently" would have been for somebody else to have investigated the matter.

18.

Ken Starr was one of the lead attorneys in a class-action lawsuit filed by a coalition of liberal and conservative groups against the regulations created by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known informally as McCain-Feingold Act.

19.

Ken Starr originally accepted a position at Pepperdine as the first dean of the newly created School of Public Policy in 1996.

20.

Ken Starr withdrew from the appointment in 1998, several months after the Lewinsky controversy erupted.

21.

In 2004, some five years after President Clinton's impeachment, Ken Starr was again offered a Pepperdine position at the School of Law and this time accepted it.

22.

In 2005, Ken Starr worked to overturn the death sentence of Robin Lovitt, who was on Virginia's death row for murdering a man during a robbery in 1998.

23.

On May 4,2006, Ken Starr announced that he would represent the school board of Juneau, Alaska, in its appeal to the United States Supreme Court in a case brought by a former student, Joseph Frederick.

24.

Ken Starr represented Blackwater in a case involving the deaths of four unarmed civilians killed by Blackwater contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, in March 2004.

25.

Ken Starr was an advisory board member for the anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalist legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom.

26.

On January 16,2020, Ken Starr was announced as a member of then-President Donald Trump's legal team for his Senate impeachment trial.

27.

Ken Starr argued before the Senate on Trump's behalf on January 27,2020.

28.

Slate journalist Jeremy Stahl pointed out that as he was urging the Senate not to remove Trump as president, Ken Starr contradicted various arguments he used in 1998 to justify Clinton's impeachment.

29.

In defending Trump, Ken Starr claimed he was wrong to have called for impeachment against Clinton for abuse of executive privilege and efforts to obstruct Congress and stated that the House Judiciary Committee was right in 1998 to have rejected one of the planks for impeachment he had advocated for.

30.

Ken Starr invoked a 1999 Hofstra Law Review article by Yale law professor Akhil Amar, who argued that the Clinton impeachment proved just how impeachment and removal causes "grave disruption" to a national election.

31.

When Trump was impeached for a second time in 2021, Ken Starr condemned the impeachment as "dangerous" and "unconstitutional".

32.

Ken Starr was the Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean and Professor of Law at Pepperdine University, when on February 15,2010, Baylor University announced that it would introduce Ken Starr as its newest president.

33.

Ken Starr was introduced as the new president on June 1,2010.

34.

Ken Starr's inauguration was held on September 17,2010, where Stephen L Carter was the keynote speaker.

35.

Ken Starr was additionally named chancellor of Baylor in November 2013, a post that had been vacant since 2005.

36.

Ken Starr became the first person to hold the positions of president and chancellor at Baylor at the same time.

37.

The May 26,2016, announcement of personnel changes by the Board of Regents said Ken Starr was to have continued as Chancellor and as a faculty member at Baylor Law School.

38.

Ken Starr died on September 13,2022 at the Baylor St Luke's Medical Center in Houston of complications from surgery, at the age of 76.