Starr in state, questions part of Mueller report
Kenneth Starr has some questions for Robert Mueller.
The former independent counsel appointed to lead the Whitewater investigation into Bill and Hillary Clinton wants to know why Mueller included a second volume devoted to instances of possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump in the special counsel report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“This is a very important tradition in the Justice Department: We don’t issue reports that besmirch the reputations of individuals who we don’t charge with a crime,” Starr said. “That’s a very important protection for all of us.
“I’m making no accusations,” Starr said. “I’m raising questions, which is what law professors do.”
Starr commented on the Mueller report and a variety of other topics during an hourlong discussion and book-signing at the state Capitol hosted by the Little Rock Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. Starr released Contempt: A Memoir of the Clinton Investigation in September.
Starr is also a former federal judge, U.S. solicitor general, and Baylor University president and chancellor.
The Texas native urged those in attendance Thursday to keep that chief question about the second volume in mind as they consider the Mueller report.
He strolled around the state Capitol’s Old Supreme Court room in a pinstripe suit like an attorney speaking to a jury, and he answered many of the questions from a friendly audience with self-deprecating humor.
He recounted the history and evolution of special or independent counsels dating back to President Ulysses S. Grant through Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Bill Clin
ton. He noted that all independent counsels have been dogged by complaints that they’re overly aggressive or exceeding their mandates.
Their reports can be devastating to the country, Starr said, recalling the fallout from his report on Clinton and the impeachment proceedings that followed. That fallout resulted in changes to the regulations that governed the special counsel process.
Primarily, Starr said special counsels are no longer required to submit their findings to Congress, but instead, they are to issue confidential reports to the attorney general, who then must provide a summary to Congress.
Mueller issued his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, and at the urging of members of Congress from both parties, Barr publicly released a redacted version of the report last week.
Now, House Democrats are contemplating how to proceed, whether through impeachment proceedings, censure or other means.
Starr said requiring strictly a private report to the attorney general would protect the institution of the presidency and preserve the separation of powers between branches of government.
He questioned whether the second volume of Mueller’s report read more like a referral to the House of Representatives than a confidential report to Barr.
“Is history repeating itself?” Starr said.
In volume two of his report, Mueller followed a legal advisory that a president can’t stand trial while in office. The report indicated that Mueller’s team was concerned that the indictment of a sitting president would be unfair without a trial, crippling his ability to govern and possibly pre-empt impeachment.
The report did not conclude that Trump committed a crime, but it stated that it didn’t exonerate him either.
Starr said he was surprised that the White House allowed former counsel Don McGahn to testify so extensively without invoking executive or attorney-client privilege. That, Starr said, is a strong counterpoint to claims that Trump intended to obstruct the investigation.
Trump, if he wanted to obstruct, also could have hampered Mueller by providing his team a depleted budget, Starr said.
A handful of Arkansas elected officials listened to Starr speak Thursday, and several stood in line to get a copy of his book autographed. Those in attendance included Arkansas Supreme Court Justices Rhonda Wood and Shawn Womack, and several other state and federal judges.
Starr’s handling of the Whitewater investigation has been often criticized in many of the same ways Mueller’s report has been. He has also been denounced over his ouster as president of Baylor University in 2016 after an investigation into the Baptist college’s handling of sexual-assault allegations involving football players.
Starr in the 1990s investigated the Clintons’ Whitewater Development Corp. real estate dealings with associates Jim and Susan McDougal in Arkansas. Later the investigation widened to include then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker’s business dealings in the 1980s, and eventually revealed Bill Clinton’s affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Starr shared fond memories from his year-and-a-half in Searcy as a student at Harding University — though it was Harding College at the time.
He said Thursday that the people of Arkansas treated him well when he was here for the criminal trials that stemmed from the Whitewater investigation.
The investigation resulted in the conviction and resignation of Tucker. Also, 13 others were convicted or pleaded guilty related to the Arkansas investigation.
Starr said he had breakfast Thursday morning with Gov. Asa Hutchinson at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock. A U.S. representative at the time, Hutchinson was a House impeachment manager during Clinton’s proceedings before the U.S. Senate.
Starr said he didn’t have any private relationship with Hutchinson during the Whitewater investigation.
“Your governor is a very good lawyer,” Starr added as he concluded Thursday.