Media

Ken Starr: Sitting presidents should be indictable

by Joe Concha - 03/08/19 9:53 AM ET

Ken Starr, the former independent counsel who investigated President Clinton, said sitting presidents should be indictable during an interview on CNN Friday with former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart.

“Do you think a sitting president can be indicted?” CNN “New Day” co-anchor John Berman asked Starr.

“Yes, and I disagree with the Justice Department’s guidelines but it is the historic position of the department,” responded Starr.

{mosads}”I think that, plus first principles, no person is above the law, means that a president can be indicted,” Starr said.

“But that’s not the Justice Department policy, and Bob Mueller, as you know, is an officer of the Justice Department and is therefore required to follow that policy,” he added. “He cannot indict.”

.@joelockhart on Russia investigation: “There may be in some narrow legal-eagle place where that is not obstruction of justice, to the rest of us it is obstruction of justice on the face of it.”

Ken Starr: “But [Trump] didn’t shut down the investigation” https://t.co/e9WSyLOpgc pic.twitter.com/SZJFVN24FH

— New Day (@NewDay) March 8, 2019

Mueller is the special counsel investigating the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential race. He is expected to wrap-up his report soon, though nothing is completely clear about Mueller’s secretive process.

Starr, also a former solicitor general, initially was tapped to investigate the Whitewater financial case involving the Clintons, but his probe eventually became focused on Clinton’s affair with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Starr’s report alleged that Clinton perjured himself after lying under oath regarding his Oval Office affair with Lewinsky, which began during his second term.

Clinton’s legal team argued that a sitting president was immune from a civil lawsuit, in this case brought about by Paula Jones against Clinton, with Jones alleging she was sexually harassed by Clinton before he took office in 1993.

The Supreme Court rejected Clinton’s argument in a 9-0 vote in 1997.