Ken Starr, who led the Whitewater probe into former President Clinton and was later ousted as Baylor president for his handling of a sex-assault scandal, died Tuesday at 76
WASHINGTON— Ken Starr, the lawyer whose investigation led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment and who later saw his own reputation tarnished when he wasfor his handling of a sexual-assault scandal there, has died. He was 76 years old.
Still in his 30s, then-Judge Starr seemed a likely prospect for elevation to the Supreme Court, particularly after President George H.W. Bush in 1989 named him solicitor general. In that role, he represented the federal government in most of the 36 cases he argued before the Supreme Court in his long legal career.
No charges were filed against the Clintons over the investment, but the Starr investigation expanded to explore other allegations against the president. It went into high gear after a former White House employee, Linda Tripp, provided the independent counsel with tapes of secretly recorded phone conversations in which former White House intern Monica Lewinsky discussed her affair with Mr. Clinton. Ms.
Kenneth Winston Starr had risen to that double-edged prominence from a childhood in the North Texas town of Vernon and later San Antonio, where his father was a Church of Christ minister and barber and his mother set aside time every night to read Bible stories to Ken and his siblings. In 2004, Mr. Starr became the dean of Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, Calif. While leading the Christian school, he argued before the California Supreme Court in support of a state ballot proposition intended to ban same-sex marriage.that ultimately allowed Epstein to admit only to state charges and spend just over a year in jail.died by suicide in a New York jailIn 2010, Mr. Starr became the president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the nation’s largest Baptist university.
“Campus safety and the safety of our students in all respects, including freedom from interpersonal violence, was a high priority throughout my years of servant leadership,” Mr. Starr wrote in a 2017 book about his time at Baylor.