Feb 16, 2010 10:53am
Starr: ‘Absolutely’ Sorry Clinton / Lewinsky Scandal Happened
Email“The law is the law.” Starr told me this morning on ‘GMA’ “It was the right decision, of Attorney General Janet Reno…the matter had to be investigated because in our country, no one is above the law.”
He called the whole ordeal an “Unhappy chapter in the nation’s history”
Watch the entire interview here:
Obama: 'Now Is the Time For Common Sense Action' 
Romney Takes Aim at Conservatives
Kenneth Starr’s convenient mea culpa does not pass the smell test. Attempting to justify near vigilante style abuses of the independent counsel statute by saying something as nebulous as “the law is the law” underscores the sleaze of the late 1990s, led by Starr’s salacious attack on a sitting US President.
Starr was charged to investigate Whitewater, a supposed land deal gone awry, and returned to us with what amounted to a really bad Harlequin Romance manuscript. Why? Because the soon to be hailed conservative hero wanted “Starr-dom”. For a while, Ken Starr was the darling of the conservative press because of his antics. And now Starr is in Texas, preparing to take the helm as the President of Baylor University. Would any of that happened without the Lewinsky scandal? If Starr had simply closed up shop once no prosecutable evidence of land deal misdeeds turned up against President Clinton? I doubt it.
To quote ESPN’s Monday Night Football pregame show…’C'mon man!’
Donald Edmond, Esquire
Washington DC
Posted by: Donald Edmond, Esq. | February 16, 2010, 11:14 am 11:14 am
I don’t believe him….Starr carried a political vendetta against Clinton. It made him famous….His regrets are empty…Not that any of it matters anymore…
Posted by: indy_voter | February 16, 2010, 11:26 am 11:26 am
Come on, George! Just because you’re a happy morning guy now, doesn’t mean you should stop conducting proper interviews. Why was she not allowed to call a lawyer? Some of us are still waiting for an answer.
Posted by: Lawrence Shore | February 16, 2010, 12:07 pm 12:07 pm
“No one is above the law” is perhaps the most ironic statement about the US legal system today. Anyone not running for office is well aware that the wealthy, famous and/or well-connected are much less likely to face serious repurcussions for their mideeds. Meanwhile, our prisons are packed with millions of poor and minority citizens who understand how things really work. The truth is, Clinton was prosecuted because it was salacious, sold lots of newspapers, and distracted the American public from more serious crimes. Much like our current president, who is happy to tease us with his redacted history while we ignore his dismantling of the Constitution and the looting of our nation’s wealth. Since the Federal reserve Act of 1913, we have traded the position of POTUS for one of chief lobbyist for the banks and Wall Street. This is true regardless of which party controls Congress or occupies the White House.
Posted by: h5mind | February 16, 2010, 12:36 pm 12:36 pm
Dear Ken Starr,
I’ve respected your a great job and a right decision for Cliton’s impechment.
By the way, America needs your a right decision according to the law one more time for what Bush and Obama have raised a huge deficit and debts, that is much available for America to be destroyed with 10 years.
What do you think ?
Posted by: Jamie | February 16, 2010, 12:47 pm 12:47 pm
Starr is government subsidized pornographer. We’re busy cutting funds to the National Endowment of Arts and this guy spends more than $100 million to write a report detailing cigars, fellatio, and sexual mischief. The Republicans are the party of sexual deviants, philanderers, and hypocrites – their little north Starr leading the way. PS – George S is a terrible newsman, always has been. He does no homework and lets his guests say anything unchallenged. BORING.
Posted by: marshall | February 16, 2010, 1:24 pm 1:24 pm
“…the matter had to be investigated because in our country, no one is above the law.””
Where has Starr been for the past eight years? Shouldn’t he be out there speaking out against Dubya Bush and his cronies (and DEMANDING justice) if that’s truly the case?!?
Posted by: The GhostPony | February 16, 2010, 1:41 pm 1:41 pm
Oh Please Mr.George Stephanopoulos,
Yes Bill Clinton lied about a sexual affair. And we wasted millions of dollars getting every detail.
Just imagine if we had an investigation into the lies the Bush Crime family told us that led to all those Iraqi children being turned into red mist.
Just imagine if you and ABC News gave as much time to the Chilcot Inquiry as you do Bill Clinton’s sex life.
If it were not for the doctrine of American exceptionalism the entire Bush Crime family would be given a fair trial and sent to prison where they belong. But Bush will never be held to account as long as the news continues to distract not inform.
Posted by: NO2WAR | February 16, 2010, 1:42 pm 1:42 pm
Judge Starr is an honest man, and that’s what got him in trouble with the Left. A man with less integrity would have done like nearly everyone else and looked the other way. He didn’t set the impeachment hearings for Clinton in motion; the truth did. But I guess most people don’t much like the truth these days.
Posted by: J.T. | February 16, 2010, 1:53 pm 1:53 pm
I still want our money back from this expensive investigation.
How about prosecuting Bush & Co.?
Posted by: Pete Bogs | February 16, 2010, 2:31 pm 2:31 pm
Ken Starr was there to get President Clinton to either resign or be convicted by the US Senate after his impeachment by the House. It would ,so they thought,guarantee that the next president would be a republican,who would appoint Starr,on behalf of a ”grateful” nation to the US Supreme Court,maybe Chief Justice, had Rehnquist resigned. Starr ought to go down in history with the likes of Aaron Burr.
Posted by: Leatherneck | February 16, 2010, 3:34 pm 3:34 pm
I guess this is the crazy world we live in: a President [Clinton] who has an illicit affair gets impeached. A Vice-President [Cheney] who admits to authorizing the torture of detainees, in violation of Section 2340A of the federal criminal code, doesn’t. No one is above the law?
Posted by: theWalrus | February 16, 2010, 3:39 pm 3:39 pm
If this was an unhappy chapter in US history, it was because a viscious ignorant Ken Starr made it an unhappy chapter.
Posted by: US Citizen | February 16, 2010, 3:43 pm 3:43 pm
Personally, I always have thought Clinton should simply have resigned when the truth about the Lewinsky affair came out; his actions demeaned us as a nation. It would be a very different world if he had I think. The Presidency and the government wouldn’t have been paralyzed by the impeachment proceedings for the last year and a half of Clinton’s tenure. Al Gore would have been an incumbent President in the 2000 election. George Bush may not have been elected, who knows.
Posted by: JayHub | February 16, 2010, 3:52 pm 3:52 pm
It was a sad day that sex and country devided us. iIt seems that the only time we can get ones attention, is to mention,SEX, Abortion, gays, or religion, and the right just comes alive, with a whip and a rifle.
Posted by: sirwinston | February 16, 2010, 5:03 pm 5:03 pm
the bottom line , georgie girl is that everyone is above law unless you are black or make less than 250,000 a year.
Posted by: jim | February 16, 2010, 5:10 pm 5:10 pm
This is a joke. He must be forgetting that he accosted Monica Lewinsky at a shopping center, took her to a hotel room, and threatened to put her mother in JAIL as an accessory to a crime if she refused to speak to him.
Ken Starr brought his charges to a Federal Grand Jury and they threw out EVERY SINGLE CHARGE.
So… He went to a Republican Congress and they came up with the stupid idea of impeaching a twice-elected President. GAG.
And, btw, imho, Baylor University just got in bed with John Hagee.
Posted by: Jan | February 16, 2010, 5:42 pm 5:42 pm
We now note that Bush Family & Clinton Family are REALLY good buds ‘working together’…
Welcome to the Grand Illusion
Come on in and see what’s happening
Pay the price
Get your tickets for the show
Posted by: gravel kucinich paul nader | February 16, 2010, 5:45 pm 5:45 pm
What a liar
He went after Clinton with a disgusting vengeance
He was following the Republican agenda of going after Clinton
Now he is backing off because Clinton is an extremely popular President and he knows that the students at Baylor are horrified that he is now their college pres
Posted by: suz | February 16, 2010, 6:04 pm 6:04 pm
Did you ask why he is the lead counsel on Prop 8
and how that got him run out of Pepperdine?
Posted by: suz | February 16, 2010, 6:07 pm 6:07 pm
I thought Starr was a piece of filth back then and I still think he is a piece of filth
Posted by: iona | February 16, 2010, 6:38 pm 6:38 pm
This rising Starr will one day be a falling star. Karma.
Posted by: Cynthia | February 16, 2010, 7:37 pm 7:37 pm
It is hard to read such cruel comments about a honest man who was appointed to do a investigation by the Attorney General of the US. It is not Ken Starrs fault that Clinton repeatedly lied in courts of law. Or that Clinton was perfectly willing to make others out to be liars, when he was the liar. I cant imagine any woman excusing Clinton not only for demeaning the presidencey of the United States, but also using women as a prey and a scapegoat.
Posted by: Robert Watson | February 16, 2010, 8:07 pm 8:07 pm
I have to either laugh or shake my head in wonderment at the silly people who consider Starr to have only been following the evidence. As has been mentioned above, Starr was told to check out Whitewater. When he couldn’t find anything illegal, he started throwing his net wider to see if there was anything that he could find.
The best he could do was a case of infidelity that didn’t even begin to match what one of Ken’s best buddies was doing at the very time. (Talking to you, Gingrich.) But Ken went with what he could find, the welfare of the nation be damned. The Republican right has never put the nation above their own power hunger.
Posted by: Texas Aggie | February 16, 2010, 8:35 pm 8:35 pm
How much time could Clinton have spent tracking Osama, if he hadn’t been tied up in Starr’s Kangaroo for years. Starr’s “Throw everything at the wall to see what sticks” impeachment imperative was the grotesque height of assininity.
Posted by: Starr's mother | February 17, 2010, 2:26 am 2:26 am
President Clinton said himself that if he didn’t have to spend so much time defending himself, he could have accomplished more for this country. Republicans dogged him every day of his presidency, spending millions in the process. This is what the republicans accomplished. Not much has changed.
Posted by: zane | February 17, 2010, 7:24 am 7:24 am
Sure Ken Starr has regrets, he should!!
How he abused his duties for the Republican party’s vendetta to destroy a Democrat president! The real losers were the American public i.e. 9-11!!!!
Posted by: T. Barr | February 17, 2010, 10:00 am 10:00 am
Bart Starr should be accused/convicted of playing toady to the republican party who is and always will continue to block the democratic president. It does’nt matter how they manage. Men and women since the beginning of history have sometimes been unable to control their sexual appetites. So What? President Clinton did more for the country than any conservatives can admit or imagine. Where is the investgation of Pres. Bush when he refused to honor his Military personal obligations. He let daddy get him out of that. Where is the criminal investigation of Newt after he signed a book deal with the most dangereous meadia conservative their is? Now he is the darling of the far right. How about Rush getting away with doctor shopping and possession of thousands of illegal drugs? The list goes on. It is disgusting for one or two politicians waiting for the vote count so they can control the issue. This is what the voters find so unaccectable.
Posted by: Ragoo | February 17, 2010, 11:14 am 11:14 am
T. Barr: See any similarities of republican vendetta between Clinton and Obama? Republicans haven’t changed. I knew that Obama needed to stay on the defensive when he became president because republicans would attack him the same way they did Clinton. Saying and accusing anything hoping something will stick. Instead of “kumbaya” Obama needs to be singing “Now you’re messin with a SOB”!!
Posted by: zane | February 17, 2010, 11:25 am 11:25 am
$100 million? Gee, I thought it was only $60 million we wasted on “getting” Clinton. We can thank the Republicans for doing what they usually do: distracting stupid Americans from things that really matter. And it also showed us what the Dems are: completely spineless and totally unable to stand up to the lying Repubs in the media. After all this time, the Dems still haven’t figured out how to rebut Repub propaganda.
Posted by: sharonsj | February 17, 2010, 11:50 am 11:50 am
If “The law is the law”, and “nobody is above the law”, I now ask Mr. Starr to call for all-out investigation of Bush and Cheney.
Cheney confessed to his part in war crimes just the other day. Does this mean that he needs extradited to another country because people like Starr are unwilling to advocate that the laws of The United States of America be enforced???
Bush gave the orders.
Posted by: EnderW | February 17, 2010, 11:54 am 11:54 am
Lest we forget the loudest cohorts of Starr’s whom one and all were having adulterous affairs whilst screaming from the roof tops about someone else getting quickies from a willing participant.
Once the GOP’s sense of entitled dictatorships goes on hiatus after failed elections the screaming accusations are their only contribution to a democracy they tell us they hate day-after-day but demand they and only they have jobs in.
During elections: the GOP’s banshees tell us to vote for anyone but them is an act of treason and more accusations are red headlines in knuckle dragger new
news providers.
Just once do ya’ think the GOP could run a candidate based on their qualifications or merits…. or is the world who IS watching going to continue witnessing them motivating “the why”" the GOP’s spread of democracy was and is met with IEDs and worse?
Posted by: Mark | February 17, 2010, 1:37 pm 1:37 pm
I love how it is everybody’s fault EXCEPT the guy who committed perjury. George is another Clinton enabler.
Posted by: RJ | February 19, 2010, 11:09 am 11:09 am
Of the Ken Starr witch hunt of the 1990′s, Abe Lincoln would have said;
“You can fool some of the people, ALL of the time”… ;^)
– cool site; Balkingpoints ; incredible satellite view of earth
Posted by: RField | February 20, 2010, 3:40 pm 3:40 pm
You liberals are pathetic. You are comparing someone having an affair in the oval office when he should have been overseeing the affairs of the country, to someone (Cheney) who was doing everything in his power to protect the interests of the American people by whatever means necessary. Forcing Cheney/Bush to go to great lengths to get info out of those Arab bastards! Your liberal reasoning is killing this nation. Get a clue.
Posted by: Scott | February 25, 2010, 10:57 am 10:57 am
Starr didn’t force disgraced former President Clinton to lie under oath. Clinton did that all on his own. For that he was impeached by the House. That’s also why disgraced former President Clinton was disbarred. Or was the Arkansas State Bar association run by Starr as well? Hmmm…
Posted by: Jeff Tanner | February 26, 2010, 1:53 am 1:53 am
Starr stated no one is above the law, what a joke. Think of all the politicians in office getting kickbacks, taking bribes and then voting for the corporations that gave it to them. The senators and representatives are only worried about lining their own pockets and to hell with everybody else.
Posted by: bob anderson | March 2, 2010, 2:40 pm 2:40 pm