Ken Starr: If I was Trump's lawyer, ‘I would be very concerned’

POLITICO's Off Message

POLITICO

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🗓️ 25 September 2018

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

The Clinton-era independent counsel weighs in on Brett Kavanaugh, why Trump has an obligation to answer Mueller's questions and whether he plans to support Trump in 2020. Ken Starr would love to hear from Donald Trump. He thinks he could help. The former independent counsel whose investigation into President Bill Clinton led to Clinton’s impeachment says President Trump has enough to be worried about that he’ll need good lawyers around him as he decides whether to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller. “If I’m on [Trump’s] criminal defense team, I would be very concerned,” Starr said in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast. “I don’t know what President Trump knows, but there have been a number of guilty pleas. Some of those guilty pleas go to false statements, so I would just be cautious” before answering questions from Muller. Starr says he’d advise this even while he believes that Trump has a duty to answer investigators’ questions under oath, just as Bill Clinton did 20 years ago. “He is the president of the United States, and I think that carries with it an obligation to cooperate with duly-authorized federal investigations,” Starr said. “You’re not above the law. You think you’ve got a time-out based upon your service as president. We respect you, you are occupying the presidency, you have a very important job,” Starr said. “But there’s no time out. You have to respond when you’re summoned to the bar of justice. That’s the way I respond to all this. You have to be a rule of law person if you’re going to occupy a position of trust.” As he promotes his new memoir, “Contempt,” Starr—who says he probably wouldn’t have written the book if Hillary Clinton had won, reasoning that it would have damaged her presidency unfairly—says “President Trump would be well-advised” to a take lesson from the book to heart: rules matter. “Facts will come back to haunt you eventually,” said Starr. “The truth ends up coming out, and so you better deal with those facts.” POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear. Get more at politico.com/podcasts/off-message Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to OffMessage. I'm Isaac Dover.
0:04.1	What's your current state of mind on whether President Trump should sit down with him with Mueller?
0:08.1	Well, there are two perspectives. If I'm on his criminal defense team, I would be very concerned.
0:13.1	Why?
0:14.0	First of all, I don't know what President Trump knows.
0:16.8	But there have been a number of guilty pleas. Some of those guilty pleas go to false statements.
0:22.6	So I would just be cautious with respect to the president's duty to the other perspective
0:29.0	that I have as he is the president of the United States.
0:33.1	And I think that carries with it an obligation to cooperate with duly authorized federal investigations.
0:39.2	Today's guest, Ken Starr. Star, it's one of those very few people in politics. It really
0:44.4	doesn't need an introduction. You know who he is. You know what he's famous for, what he'll
0:49.2	always be famous for. All you need to do is hear his name. and it conjures up all those memories of the 1990s,
0:55.9	the Clinton investigation. Monica Lewinsky, the Star Report. It doesn't feel like 20 years ago to me.
1:02.2	Does it feel like 20 years ago to you? Especially not with everything going on now, where there's another
1:06.5	president facing a special counsel, a president whose team is doing its own spinning and delegitimizing
1:11.6	of the investigation, or it's become more of a political issue than a legal one. There aren't a lot
1:16.4	of people on earth who can have a real window into what Bob Muller's life must be like day to day.
1:21.7	But Starr does, or at least he's come close. He's been there. He's lived it. And as you'll hear, he'd actually be interested in
1:29.1	talking to Trump about all of it and maybe getting involved again. And now he's written a book about it
1:33.8	called contempt. Suffice to say, he is not full of warm feelings toward the Clintons, nor any
1:38.3	reconsideration. It did strike me how much he talked in the book and in our conversation about
1:43.4	being impressed by Bill Clinton's political skills and by him as a person, as you'll hear us talk about.
	...

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