Almost the whole gang’s here. The hottest names in the news today make appearances in the new book by Ken Starr, the independent prosecutor who tried to topple President Bill Clinton.
In addition to Bill, there’s Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Monica Lewinsky, John McCain and even today’s man of the hour, Brett Kavanaugh, newest nominee to the Supreme Court.
Just one name is missing — Osama bin Laden. On whom, more in a moment.
Starr’s book, out this week, is titled “Contempt.” It’s a memoir of the Clinton investigation that led to only the second impeachment of a president in our gloriously tumultuous political history.
Its headline news is that Starr was so irked by Hillary Clinton’s answers in the probe that he considered indicting the first lady for perjury. The book touches, though, on bigger issues.
Bigger, in particular, as another special counsel is investigating another president — in a case also involving talk of presidential perjury and obstruction of justice, not to mention sex.
Both probes raise the question of whether the independent or watered-down special counsels are even permitted by the Constitution to prosecute a sitting president.
My own view is that they’re not. I’ve opposed them all, from Archibald Cox (who went after President Nixon), to Starr, to Lawrence Walsh (who went after Reagan), to Robert Mueller, who’s targeting Trump.
It’s not a Republican or Democratic thing. It has to do with the president being the only officer the Constitution empowers — and requires — to take care that our laws are faithfully executed.
That is one reason why the president is given sole power to commission “all” federal officers. And why the Supreme Court has concluded that includes the power to fire them.
Starr, though, wasn’t appointed by his president. He was handed his job by a three-judge panel, acting under a law Congress used to filch powers the Constitution granted presidents.
That was in 1994. Starr couldn’t resist an exhaustive investigation of almost anything that came up, from the suicide of Clinton lawyer Vince Foster to presidential sex.
So Starr’s probe stretched to something like five years. He proved that even the most stalwart of lawyers cannot resist the temptation of unlimited power.
Starr reopened the investigation of Clinton counsel Foster, who, the previous counsel had concluded, committed suicide. Kavanaugh wrote that report.
Nor could Starr resist the so-called “Travelgate” scandal and Clinton’s affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky, and the president’s perjury in a suit brought against him by Paula Corbin Jones.
The press (particularly the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the American Spectator) did a fine job of covering these scandals. It was, though, Starr’s lurid report that led the House to impeach Clinton for perjury and obstruction.
The case fell apart — and came up short — in the Senate.
Starr’s book takes on a carping, rueful tone. He says he “deeply” regrets taking on the Lewinsky part of the investigation. Yet the Senate never got close to the two-thirds vote needed to remove Clinton from office.
So in the end, Starr’s tale is a tragedy. A former solicitor general, he was once a logical choice to be on the Supreme Court. He forsook all that for the chance to go after Clinton.
Which brings the story back to the figure whom Starr fails to mention — Osama bin Laden. The terrorist serves as a ghastly footnote to the story of Starr’s investigation of Clinton.
This is covered in the official report of the 9/11 commission. It found that on four occasions between 1998 and 2000, our covert forces presented the White House with the chance to strike bin Laden’s lair.
Yet it didn’t happen. The 9/11 commission lays this to, at least in part, “extremely difficult domestic political circumstances. Opponents were seeking the president’s impeachment.”
It’s not my intention to blame Starr for 9/11 (only bin Laden gets blame for that, and he got his just deserts). It is my intention to press a point that Starr fails to address.
Justice Antonin Scalia made it when he dissented from the case that let independent counsels proceed. He warned they could affect the “boldness of the president.”
Lawmen with unlimited budgets and little oversight, Scalia feared, could rattle not only a president but his aides. Starr’s book leaves that question hanging as another special prosecutor pursues a president.