Kenneth Starr, the former US appellate judge who led the charge to impeach then-president Bill Clinton in the late 1990s but defended Donald Trump against charges that he incited an insurrection during his second impeachment trial, has passed away at age 76.
According to Waco, Texas television station KWTX, Mr Starr died Tuesday following a “lengthy illness”.
The Texas-born jurist served as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1983 to 1989, but stepped down from the bench to serve as solicitor general of the United States under then-president George HW Bush from 1989 to 1993.
The year after he left the Bush administration, Mr Starr was called back into government service as an independent counsel charged with investigating whether Mr Bush’s successor — Mr Clinton — or his wife Hillary Clinton violated any laws while investing in a failed Arkansas land deal in the late 1970s.
Over three years, Mr Starr never found any evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons, but when he submitted his final report to Congress he recommended that Mr Clinton be impeached because he lied in a deposition related to a civil suit for sexual harassment filed against him by a former Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones.
