What was Ken Starr’s Net Worth?
Ken Starr was an American lawyer and judge who had a net worth of $2 million. Ken Starr is best known for his time as an independent counsel investigating the Bill Clinton presidential administration, which resulted in his Starr Report and the impeachment of Clinton in 1998. He later served as the dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law and the president and chancellor of Baylor University, where he was removed in 2016 for ignoring multiple allegations of sexual assault on campus.
Early Life and Education
Ken Starr was born on July 21, 1946 in Vernon, Texas to Vannie and Willie and was raised in Centerville. He attended Sam Houston High School in San Antonio, where he was a straight-A student. Starr went on to attend Harding University, a Churches of Christ-affiliated school in Searcy, Arkansas. There, he was a member of the Young Democrats. Starr eventually transferred to George Washington University in Washington, DC, from which he graduated with his BA in history in 1968. Due to having psoriasis, he evaded the draft during the Vietnam War and earned an MA degree from Brown University in 1969. Starr went on to attend the Duke University School of Law, where he edited the Duke Law Journal and obtained his JD in 1973.
Law Career
After earning his JD, Starr served as a law clerk to judge David William Dyer of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He did this from 1973 to 1974, and then clerked for Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger of the US Supreme Court from 1975 to 1977. Starr subsequently joined the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in its Washington, DC office. In 1981, he became counselor to US Attorney General William French Smith. Starr was later involved with the law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
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Federal Judge and Solicitor General
In 1983, Starr was nominated by Ronald Reagan to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, for the seat vacated by George MacKinnon. He was confirmed a week later and held the position until he resigned in the spring of 1989. After that, from 1989 to 1993, Starr served as the US Solicitor General under George H. W. Bush.
Independent Counsel
In the summer of 1994, Starr was appointed by a special division of the DC Circuit to investigate the suicide of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster as well as the Whitewater real estate investments of President Bill Clinton. The investigation eventually expanded to other controversial matters within the Clinton administration, including the firing of White House Travel Office personnel and the suspected perjury to cover up Clinton’s sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky. During his investigation of the sex scandal, which included secret taping, Starr was criticized by many for crossing ethical lines. His work culminated in the Starr Report, which served as the basis for Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. Ultimately, the President was not convicted, but his Arkansas law license was suspended for five years.
Later Career Activities
After the Clinton investigation, Starr resigned as an independent counsel and returned to private practice. He served as an appellate lawyer and also taught at New York University, the Chapman University School of Law, and the George Mason University School of Law. In the spring of 2004, Starr was named dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law. Over the subsequent years, he worked on a number of death penalty cases as well as various lawsuits, including Morse v. Frederick, Blackwater Security Consulting v. Nordan, and Strauss v. Horton. Starr also defended serial child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In 2010, Starr left Pepperdine and became the new president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He later added the role of chancellor in 2013. Starr served as president and chancellor at Baylor until 2016, when he was removed after an investigation found that he had ignored multiple allegations of sexual assault that had occurred on campus over a span of seven years. He went on to become a member of Donald Trump’s legal team during Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020. During Starr’s defense before the Senate, it was noted that he contradicted many arguments he had previously used in 1998 to justify Clinton’s impeachment.
Personal Life and Death
In 1970, Starr married Alice Mendell. They had three children together.
In the spring of 2022, Starr was brought to Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston with an unspecified illness. On September 13, he passed away from complications from surgery.
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