Defense counsel Starr: Impeachment is ‘hell’

WASHINGTON

Impeachment, he said, “is hell.” A measure of

“last resort.” A bad habit to be kicked.

With that, Ken Starr, the man whose years-long probe led to the impeachment of the 42nd president, stood before senators on Monday and delivered a nearly hourlong argument against the ouster of the 45th.

Starr argued that it’s time to bring an end to “the age of impeachment.” He spoke to the senators in a modulated tone, flicking at the Pentagon Papers, Richard Nixon’s crimes, the Irancontra scandal and, yes, the Clinton impeachment. “In this particular juncture in America’s history, the Senate is being called to sit as the high court of impeachment all too frequently,” Starr said. “Indeed, we are living in what I think can aptly be described as the age of impeachment. …

How did we get here?”

Starr, a former solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush, is most famous for his time as the independent counsel who led an investigation of Clinton that started as probe of an Arkansas land deal and evolved into an examination of his sexual relationship with White House intern

Monica Lewinsky. Relying on the sometimes-graphic 475-page Starr report, the Republican-controlled House impeached Clinton and the Democratic-led Senate acquitted him.

Back then, real estate mogul Donald Trump wasn’t a fan of Starr’s work. “I think Ken Starr is a lunatic. I really think that Ken Starr is a disaster,” Trump said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show at the time. He called Starr a “total wacko” and “off his rocker.”

On Monday, in his defense of Trump, Starr seemed to argue that impeachment is a constitutional relic that should be kept in a museum and only rarely used. Starr made the case that Democrats’ allegations of misconduct by Trump hardly measure up to the previous instances when Congress has seriously considered removing a president from office.