Ken Starr: Conceding Defeat or Scheming to Deceive?
A comment before the Court of Appeals sets off another round of speculation on Starr's motives.
Tuesday, June 30th, 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- During the calm before the storm which Linda Tripp's appearance before Ken Starr's Washington grand jury has already set off, a very interesting comment by Starr to a panel of judges set off a new round of speculation on what exactly is going on inside Ken Starr's investigation.
Starr is attempting to overturn presidential access to a basic right of American citizens, attorney-client privilege -- more specifically, the right to receive confidential counsel from government-paid lawyers in a criminal inquiry.
Attorneys for President Clinton argued that Starr had very recently informed the Supreme Court that he might file an impeachment report to Congress, and therefore the President would be entitled to solicit confidential advice from his government lawyers who are acting in his defense in the investigation surrounding Monica Lewinsky -- a straightforward argument.
But yesterday, Ken Starr did something that caught Clinton's attorneys and, according to some reports, the judges hearing the argument completely off guard. In the words of an article in this morning's New York Times, "The independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, argued that the possibility of impeachment was too remote to be considered.…in an unusual twist, Starr walked away from what he had said about an impeachment report, telling the three-judge panel that the president was not entitled to keep the advice confidential because impeachment was too remote an issue." he attempted to convince the judges that they should focus on the White House's attempt to limit testimony before a grand jury.
Note the careful choice of words "the possibility was too remote." Why exactly is Ken Starr saying that the possibility of an impeachment report is suddenly remote?
Is he suddenly conceding that he doesn't "have the goods" to impeach Bill Clinton?
Certainly, in the short term, it is clear from the comments of certain senators and representatives that Congress simply does not want an interim reprt from Starr -- Democrats because it could damage Clinton, Republicans because it could backfire and sandbag their hopes of retaining the House come election time in November.
Until yesterday it was widely assumed that Starr would hold off until he could hand over a complete report to Congress. Now, suddenly, Starr is saying that impeachment is "too remote" a possibility to be allowed in the consideration of whether the President has the right to legal advice from attroneys on the government payroll.
Starr's obvious intent is to play down the possibility of anything to do with impeachment -- while leaving the door open for that very possibility. It almost seems that Starr wants to have it both ways by exploiting Congress' current reluctance to even consider the possibility of an interim report in order to both deprive the President of a right and preserve the "remote" possibility of impeachment.
At best, his argument is a stretch; at worst, a flagrantly specious and outright deceptive situational argument to weaken not merely Clinton but the Presidency.
We doubt that Attorney General Janet Reno will ever move against Starr in order not to create a "pseudo-day night massacre" scenario the President's enemies would exploit with alacrity. But you can be sure that if Starr were investigating anybody but the President, Reno might well sanction or fire Starr for such a brazen shift in position -- a U-turn that smacks of adjusting to a changing situation rather than arguing a specific legal and Constitutional issue.
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