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From Clinton investigator to Trump impeachment defender: The life of controversial attorney Ken Starr

On Friday it was revealed that President Trump had hired controversial attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr for his impeachment defense team.

ken starr october 2018
  • Starr became a household name in the 1990s when he led an investigation into President Clinton's alleged misconduct in office.
  • In the years since he was fired as Baylor University's president following a sexual assault scandal and wrote a memoir of his time as special counsel.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

One of the biggest names in President Bill Clinton's impeachment just joined President Donald Trump's defense: Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

Author of the infamous "Starr Report," which included the sordid details of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, the Republican lawyer had lately become one of Trump's biggest defenders in television appearances on Fox News.

While Starr is best known for his work on the Clinton investigation, his legal career spans decades. There was once talk of him getting a coveted nomination to the Supreme Court.

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But Clinton's controversial impeachment ended all talk of that, and Starr's reputation was further tarnished in recent years when he presided over Baylor University during a sexual assault crisis.

Continue to read more about Starr's background.

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Source: USA Today

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Source: USA Today

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The New York Times summed up opinions about Starr at the time in a recent story: "To his admirers, Mr. Starr was an upright pursuer of a lying, philandering president who had dishonored the Oval Office. To his critics, Mr. Starr was a moralistic, sex-obsessed Inspector Javert persecuting a president out of ideological animus."

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Prosecutors believe Epstein went on to abuse more young women and girls. He was rearrested on new sex trafficking charges last year but died by suicide while awaiting trial in August.

Source: USA Today

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Starr later resigned as chancellor of the school as well. He has always maintained that he wasn't involved in the handling of the sexual assault cases, which involved at least 17 women.

He later told ESPN that he accepted responsibility for what happened "as a matter of conscience."

"The captain goes down with the ship," he said in July 2016.

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"Ken Starr's a lunatic. I really think that Ken Starr is a disaster," Trump told NBC at the time, according to USA Today . "I really think that Ken Starr was terrible."

And in another CNBC interview discussing Hillary Clinton's run for the Senate in 2001, Trump called Starr a "total wacko."

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SEE ALSO: Trump reportedly picked his impeachment defense team based on how well he thinks they can perform on TV

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