Government

The Ken Starr Trainwreck Goes Supernova

It seems like there might be a trend here.

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

It’s an eventful week on the Ken Starr beat. Perversion of Justice (affiliate link), an upcoming book from the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown on the Jeffrey Epstein case, will identify Ken Starr as the “most powerful force” in the effort to let Epstein avoid prison when originally caught. This came out in advance of the book’s release when Brown took to Twitter to address just a fraction of the revelations in former Starr acolyte Judi Hershman’s Medium mea culpa detailing how she went from working with Starr to allegedly having an affair with him to realizing that he’s dedicated his professional career to providing cover to serial abusers.

So, not a great week for Ken.

Brown’s claim that Starr was the driving force behind Epstein’s plea deal (I wonder what Alan Dershowitz would say, since he’s on record saying the deal wasn’t lenient enough) has put a new spotlight on his involvement in the case, though we were talking about his role way back when Epstein was still alive, because even then, Starr’s deep involvement with Epstein was completely predictable.

As Hershman’s Medium piece explains, Starr’s career from prosecuting Clinton’s impeachment to standing behind Donald Trump during his impeachment, places him as the Forrest Gump of high-profile abuse.

And in between he zealously took up the cause of a Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual assault, Jeffrey Epstein, a Baylor University football player accused of rape and even a schoolteacher in suburban Virginia found guilty of molesting 5 young school girls.

Time after time, he’s there to bail out abusers. Starr’s Baylor University tenure disintegrated in epic fashion as Pepper Hamilton was brought in to investigate Starr’s role in presiding over an extensive series of sexual assaults and responding with a blind eye at best and an active cover-up at worst. After the investigations and his subsequent firing, he tried to play defense regarding his tenure… badly.

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But Hershman’s got years’ worth of anecdotes about Starr’s willingness to go to bat for misogyny.

I had met Kavanaugh in 1998 when he was a 33-year-old member of then, Independent Counsel Starr’s team investigating Bill Clinton, and I was a 39-year-old strategic communications consultant hired to help prep Starr to present Congress with his legendary report detailing President Bill Clinton’s sexual interactions with a Monica Lewinsky. One day after a meeting at the independent counsel offices, I was alone in a conference room collecting materials when Kavanaugh entered. He began berating me and invading my personal space in a deranged fury that sent me into flight around the table.

Hershman claims Starr blew off the incident noting that Kavanaugh could well end up on the Supreme Court. When powerful people are willing to carry enough water for you… anything is possible!

After sketching out the general contours of an affair with Starr, she talks about the first time she heard about Jeffrey Epstein.

… he asked me, if on my next visit to South Florida, I could extend myself to counsel a “very wealthy, very smart businessman who got himself into trouble for getting involved with a couple of underage girls who lied about their ages.” I confess I did not recognize Jeffrey Epstein’s name at the time, but I knew what statutory rape was and I couldn’t understand why Ken Starr would be involved with him. “Is this a church thing?” I asked. “Are you trying to ‘cure’ him? Why would you do this!”

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It’s really something to read someone finally put all the pieces together. Hershman’s just taking every time Starr boosted a colleague like Kavanaugh, or defended a pedophile on the grounds that “[h]e promised to keep it above 18 from now on,” or got drummed out of a university in disgrace for systematically mishandling sexual assault reports, or terrorized an intern to settle a political beef with Bill Clinton… and finally seeing it all line up like the end of The Usual Suspects.

Hey, maybe it’s not an accident that this guy is always at ground zero of this behavior?

Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein and Me [Medium]

Jeffrey Epstein’s Arrest Forces Us To Ask: Which Dirtbag Lawyers In This Case Will Face Their Own Music?

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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