American attorney who gained international notoriety as the Special Prosecutor for the investigation of wrongdoing of the American President, Bill Clinton, in what was known as the Whitewater controversy from 1994 to 1998.
After passing the bar in 1973, he had an all-star Washington resume that included stints as solicitor general under George Bush and as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge and clerk to former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger.
A reputable lawyer, looking more like an accountant than a tenacious warrior, he was appointed independent counsel on 5 August 1994, first investigating Whitewater.
With a small army of lawyers seeking to issue indictments against the President, the First Lady and their associates, he damaged his position in February 1997 when word leaked out that he planned to resign from the probe on the 1 August to accept a position as dean of Pepperdine University Law school, then reversing himself.
With a number of indictments of Clinton colleagues on record, Starr’s investigation of the Paula Jones accusation of sexual harassment by the President took a new twist on 12 January 1998. Government employee Linda Tripp informed Starr’s team that she had inside information on an affair between Clinton and a 21-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. On 17 January, Clinton denied having sexual relationship with Lewinsky in a sworn deposition for the Paula Jones case.
In the following seven months, 29 current and former White House employees went before the grand jury. After making a deal for immunity, Lewinsky testified about her relationship with Clinton on 6 August. On 17 August, when Clinton himself was forced to testify, he admitted that he had “misled people” and had indeed “had an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky.”
In mid-September 1998, Starr delivered his report to Congress. His investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton, with whom Starr shared Time’s Man of the Year designation for 1998. Despite his impeachment, the president was acquitted in the subsequent trial before the United States Senate as all 45 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted to acquit.
After a costly five years, Starr resigned from counsel on 18 October 1999, and went into private practice.
Starr served as the dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law. He was later the president and chancellor of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, from June 2010 until May and June 2016, respectively, and was the Louise L. Morrison chair of constitutional law at Baylor Law School. On 26 May 2016, following an investigation into the mishandling by Starr of several sexual assaults at the school, Baylor University’s board of regents announced that Starr’s tenure as university president would end on 31 May 31. The board said he would continue as chancellor, but on 1 June, Starr told ESPN that he would resign his position effective immediately. On 19 August 2016, Starr announced he would resign from his tenured professor position at Baylor Law School, completely severing his ties with the university in a “mutually agreed separation, following accusations of “ignoring sexual assault issues on campus” as reported by NPR.
On 17 January 2020, Starr joined President Donald Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial.
Starr married Alice Jean Mendell on 23 August 1970 and they had three children. He died at the Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston, Texas from complications from surgery on 13 September 2022 at the age of 76.
Link to Wikipedia biography