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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKen Starr's Completely Inexcusable Career Has a New Chapter Titled 'Jeffrey Epstein'
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a37014663/ken-starr-jeffrey-epstein-plea-deal/A new book by Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald reports the former Clinton special prosecutor played a key role in the sex trafficker securing a plea deal
f there is a less excusable human being walking upright than Ken Starr, head huntsman of the Great Penis Chase of 1998, then Im hard pressed to think of who it is. Since his salacious moment in the national spotlight, Starr has presided over a disastrous sexual-misconduct scandal and alleged cover-up at Baylor University in Texas. He took a job as part of the former president*s defense team during Impeachment I, an indication that he was less offended by extramarital foolery than he used to be. And now comes a book by Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald, the journalist who blew open the story of Jeffrey Epsteins sex-trafficking empire and the sweetheart plea deal that helped enable it, in which Starr is featured as a legal engine behind said plea bargain. From the Guardian:
Brown also writes that the legal team started a semi-lurid whispering campaign against Marie Villafana, the federal prosecutor in the Epstein case. One thing we know about Ken Starr: his gifts as a casual purveyor of drive-by pornography have not dimmed since the days he was reciting Bill Clintons whats and wherefores before congressional committees. Ken Starrs post-Clinton career is proof enough of a trickster god on the side of the angels.
f there is a less excusable human being walking upright than Ken Starr, head huntsman of the Great Penis Chase of 1998, then Im hard pressed to think of who it is. Since his salacious moment in the national spotlight, Starr has presided over a disastrous sexual-misconduct scandal and alleged cover-up at Baylor University in Texas. He took a job as part of the former president*s defense team during Impeachment I, an indication that he was less offended by extramarital foolery than he used to be. And now comes a book by Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald, the journalist who blew open the story of Jeffrey Epsteins sex-trafficking empire and the sweetheart plea deal that helped enable it, in which Starr is featured as a legal engine behind said plea bargain. From the Guardian:
The book says that emails and letters sent by Starr and Epsteins then criminal defense lawyer Jay Lefkowitz show that the duo were campaigning to pressure the Justice Department to drop the case. Starr had been brought into center stage of Epsteins legal team because of his connections in Washington to the Bush administration. When Epsteins lawyers appeared to be failing in their pressure campaign, with senior DoJ officials concluding that Epstein was ripe for federal prosecution, Starr pulled out the stops. Brown discloses that he wrote an eight-page letter to Mark Filip, who had just been confirmed as deputy US attorney general, the second most powerful prosecutor in the country.
Filip was a former colleague of Starrs at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Brown writes that Starr deployed dramatic language in the letter reminiscent of the Starr report, his lurid and salacious case against Clinton that triggered the presidents 1998 impeachment. In the letter Starr begins affably, invoking the finest traditions of fairness and integrity of the DoJ. He then goes on to deliver what Brown calls a brutal punch, accusing prosecutors involved in the Epstein case of misconduct in trying to engineer a plea deal with the billionaire that would benefit their friends.
Brown also writes that the legal team started a semi-lurid whispering campaign against Marie Villafana, the federal prosecutor in the Epstein case. One thing we know about Ken Starr: his gifts as a casual purveyor of drive-by pornography have not dimmed since the days he was reciting Bill Clintons whats and wherefores before congressional committees. Ken Starrs post-Clinton career is proof enough of a trickster god on the side of the angels.
MORE on Starr and his penchant for protecting other rapists like Brett Kavanaugh, too..
MY comment: It appears Starr wants the US Constitution and our laws tossed in the shitter and instead supports judges for lifetime appointments who will 'rule' according to HIS interpretation of the Bible, namely that girls and women are chattel, to be raped and impregnated and forced into incubation, childbirth and motherhood whether they chose that or not. Basically, sexual and reproductive slavery. These 'American Taliban' are the driving force behind most judicial appointments in the US today and they are DANGEROUS extremists who wish to deny human rights to more than half the US population - namely women and people of color, as well as the poor, all based on THEIR interpretation of the Bible.
. . .
It is undeniably fitting that this account should turn on the cliché of the scarlet letter. For somehow Starrs role as the nations parson always comes back around to sex. Perhaps his fascination was heightened early on by his involvement in the Packwood Diaries scandal, but most notably, of course, was his 1998 pursuit of former president Clinton over his sexual relationship with a White House intern, which was bookended by his recent impeachment foray, this time defending an adulterous President, who lies about so much more sin than that. 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. And even still, in 2021, he published his latest book extolling the virtues of intersecting religion and the judiciary. Starr is all in for ramming the most extreme of White conservative judges, experienced or not, that will decide human fates based on Christian beliefs into federal, life-tenured seats. Forget the separation of church and state! Thats not what the founding fathers intended according to him.
I can date the beginning of my own rebirth to July 9, 2018, the day Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court. I sent Starr a text saying, You said to me 20 years ago, that Brett was going places Clearly! [punctuation sic] It was my first communication to Starr in memory that went unanswered, and I wondered if he picked up that my message had a bit of an edge. I had met Kavanaugh in 1998 when he was a 33-year-old member of then, Independent Counsel Starrs 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 Clintons 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.
After I invoked Judge Starr a few times, a deflated Kavanaugh left, but I felt duty bound to report the incident to Starr. As my client, he needed to be informed about anything that might raise a red flag, and my pulse rate told me this was one. Starr reacted with seeming surprise, saying Brett was probably being protective of him, and moreover was destined for great things possibly the Supreme Court. Not if he treats women like that he wont, I replied. I then asked Ken to seek an apology from Brett on my behalf and was told, Im apologizing to you for him. This is it. Hence my text to Starr in 2018 acknowledging his prediction.
As Kavanaughs confirmation process proceeded, I had no plans to come forward about that encounter. Though I found Christine Blasey Ford credible when she described being assaulted by Kavanaugh as a teenager, I wasnt sure about the relevance of my experience, which, though quite aggressive and unsettling, was not physically violent and I did not suspect it was alcohol-fueled because at the time I didnt know that Kavanaugh had been a well-known blackout drunk in college. It was only when I saw his snarling refutation of Blasey Ford that I realized that his almost feral belligerence in that conference room more than 20 years earlier had not been a one-off.
It is undeniably fitting that this account should turn on the cliché of the scarlet letter. For somehow Starrs role as the nations parson always comes back around to sex. Perhaps his fascination was heightened early on by his involvement in the Packwood Diaries scandal, but most notably, of course, was his 1998 pursuit of former president Clinton over his sexual relationship with a White House intern, which was bookended by his recent impeachment foray, this time defending an adulterous President, who lies about so much more sin than that. 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. And even still, in 2021, he published his latest book extolling the virtues of intersecting religion and the judiciary. Starr is all in for ramming the most extreme of White conservative judges, experienced or not, that will decide human fates based on Christian beliefs into federal, life-tenured seats. Forget the separation of church and state! Thats not what the founding fathers intended according to him.
I can date the beginning of my own rebirth to July 9, 2018, the day Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court. I sent Starr a text saying, You said to me 20 years ago, that Brett was going places Clearly! [punctuation sic] It was my first communication to Starr in memory that went unanswered, and I wondered if he picked up that my message had a bit of an edge. I had met Kavanaugh in 1998 when he was a 33-year-old member of then, Independent Counsel Starrs 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 Clintons 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.
After I invoked Judge Starr a few times, a deflated Kavanaugh left, but I felt duty bound to report the incident to Starr. As my client, he needed to be informed about anything that might raise a red flag, and my pulse rate told me this was one. Starr reacted with seeming surprise, saying Brett was probably being protective of him, and moreover was destined for great things possibly the Supreme Court. Not if he treats women like that he wont, I replied. I then asked Ken to seek an apology from Brett on my behalf and was told, Im apologizing to you for him. This is it. Hence my text to Starr in 2018 acknowledging his prediction.
As Kavanaughs confirmation process proceeded, I had no plans to come forward about that encounter. Though I found Christine Blasey Ford credible when she described being assaulted by Kavanaugh as a teenager, I wasnt sure about the relevance of my experience, which, though quite aggressive and unsettling, was not physically violent and I did not suspect it was alcohol-fueled because at the time I didnt know that Kavanaugh had been a well-known blackout drunk in college. It was only when I saw his snarling refutation of Blasey Ford that I realized that his almost feral belligerence in that conference room more than 20 years earlier had not been a one-off.
https://medium.com/judihershman/ken-starr-brett-kavanaugh-jeffrey-epstein-and-me-ba2dbf77b0da
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Ken Starr's Completely Inexcusable Career Has a New Chapter Titled 'Jeffrey Epstein' (Original Post)
CousinIT
Jul 2021
OP
Proud to say I despised that charlatan faux moralistic creep from the get go.
Comfortably_Numb
Jul 2021
#2
Jilly_in_VA
(9,962 posts)1. And that
tells you all you need to know about Ken Starr.....as if you didn't already.
True Blue American
(17,982 posts)4. And Brett Kavenaugh !:)
Comfortably_Numb
(3,797 posts)2. Proud to say I despised that charlatan faux moralistic creep from the get go.
FakeNoose
(32,610 posts)3. Starr's and Epstein's friendship might suggest something else
Like for example, maybe Starr was Epstein's "customer" in the same way the Prince Andrew and others were? Maybe yes, maybe no. If not, perhaps Starr came to rescue Epstein from the law at the request of another wealthy, highly-placed Repuke?
Just sayin'
RestoreAmerica2020
(3,435 posts)5. Ay, que asco! Spanish dicho: Hierba mala nunca muere!
..[bad weeds never die means bad, evil people never die.]
Grant it, we will all succumb to death one day, yet sadly there is no shortage of evil, bad, greedy, corrupt hatefilled people in the world; unfortunately when one [evil, bad] person does die --he/she is only replaced by someone even worse.
Asco: disgust, revulsion
Dicho: proverb
Hierba: weeds
Mala: bad, evil
Muere: die