Kenneth Starr

Kenneth W. Starr (July 21, 1946 to September 13, 2022) was an American lawyer, a former judge of the D.C. Circuit, Solicitor General of the United States from 1989 to 1993, and the Whitewater independent counsel. In 2007 and 2008, while dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law and of counsel to Kirkland & Ellis, he represented Jeffrey Epstein in the negotiation and aftermath of the Epstein non-prosecution agreement, writing to U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta that notice to Epstein's victims was "wholly inappropriate" and appealing the agreement to the Deputy Attorney General. On May 26, 2016 the regents of Baylor University removed him as president after an outside review of the university's response to sexual assault reports.¹²³

Career

Starr clerked in the 1970s for Judge David W. Dyer of the Fifth Circuit and for Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. He served as counselor to Attorney General William French Smith, as a judge of the D.C. Circuit, and as the 39th Solicitor General, from 1989 to 1993 under George H.W. Bush, arguing twenty-five cases before the Supreme Court. In private practice he was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis and at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. As independent counsel on the Whitewater matter he conducted the investigation of President Bill Clinton. On April 6, 2004 he was appointed dean of Pepperdine's law school.¹

The Epstein Negotiation

Epstein added Starr and Jay Lefkowitz to his defense in early August 2007, immediately after the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida presented a term sheet requiring a state guilty plea, incarceration, sex offender registration and civil damages. Starr was then dean of Pepperdine's law school and of counsel to Kirkland & Ellis. Acosta had been an associate at Kirkland a decade earlier and had worked on at least one matter each with Starr and Lefkowitz; a colleague told the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility that he once entered Acosta's office as Acosta finished a telephone call and Acosta said, "[T]hat was Ken Starr." On August 6, 2007 First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman wrote to Acosta, "I didn't know Kirkland made a call into you. You were right. Unbelievable."²

Starr presented the defense case at Acosta's first meeting with Epstein's lawyers on September 7, 2007, arguing that the matter belonged to the state. Two prosecutors recalled that he addressed himself directly to Acosta and remarked that they were "the only people in this room who have run the [gantlet] of confirmation by the Senate." Acosta did not recall the comment. The agreement was signed on September 24, 2007 by Epstein and his lawyers Gerald Lefcourt and Lilly Ann Sanchez.²⁴

On November 28, 2007 Starr asked by letter for a meeting with Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher of the Criminal Division, arguing that the office had improperly compelled Epstein to pay civil damages under 18 U.S.C. 2255 as part of a state resolution. Acosta wrote to Starr on November 30: "I am directing our prosecutors not to issue victim notification letters until this Friday at 5 p.m., to provide you with time to review these options with your client." In a seven-page letter to Starr of December 4 he wrote that the prosecutors had complained of defense tactics under which, "as soon as resolution is reached on one issue, defense counsel finds ways to challenge the resolution collaterally." On December 5 Starr and Lefkowitz answered that "it is wholly inappropriate for your Office to send this letter under any circumstances," and that it was "certainly inappropriate to issue this letter without affording us the right to review it." No notification letters went out that month.²⁵

On December 7, 2007 Starr and Lefkowitz sent Acosta "independent ethics opinions" by the former U.S. Attorney Joe D. Whitley and a retired federal judge, and on December 11 Starr transmitted two submissions by Lefkowitz attacking the conduct of the investigation and the line prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaña. Starr's covering letter complained that the government had given "oral notification of the victim notification letter" to the lawyer of a girl whose recorded interview showed she "did not in any manner view herself as a victim." He, Alan Dershowitz, Lefcourt and Martin Weinberg met Acosta in Miami on December 14, 2007, and on December 17 Starr and Lefkowitz sent Acosta a 110-page letter that invoked the State Attorney's Office's view that Epstein should not have to register as a sex offender.²⁴

Appeals to Main Justice

In March 2008 Starr told Fisher that the defense would want an audience with her if the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section supported prosecution; he, Lefkowitz and Weinberg met the section's chief, Drew Oosterbaan, on March 12, 2008, a session a deputy chief described as a "listening session" in which the defense team said "some outrageous things." Starr then accused Sloman and Villafaña of "encouraging civil litigation" against Epstein. After the section concluded on May 15, 2008 that "federal prosecution in this case would not be improper or inappropriate," Starr and Whitley wrote on May 19 to Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip asking for review "of the federal involvement in a quintessentially state matter." Their second letter, of May 27, argued that Epstein "entered the public arena only by virtue of his close personal association with former President Bill Clinton" and that the office "never would have contemplated a prosecution in this case if Mr. Epstein were just another 'John.'" It was the first defense submission to mention Clinton.²

Filip told the Office of Professional Responsibility that he had never heard of Epstein before Starr's letter, that the argument that there was no federal basis for prosecution was "ludicrous," and that the claim of political motivation "just seemed unserious." On June 23, 2008 Senior Associate Deputy Attorney General John Roth wrote to Starr and Lefkowitz that "[e]ven if we were to substitute our judgment for that of the U.S. Attorney, we believe that federal prosecution of this case is appropriate." Starr then wrote to Acosta that they had reached "the end of a long and arduous road": "While I am obviously very unhappy at what I believe is the government's treatment of my client, a man whom I have come to deeply admire, I recognize that we have filed and argued our 'appellate motions' and lost." Acosta later wrote that Dershowitz, Starr and Lefkowitz "all sought to make peace" with him after the plea, and called it "a proud moment."²

Baylor University

Starr became president of Baylor University in Waco. In the fall of 2015 the regents engaged the law firm Pepper Hamilton to review the university's institutional response under Title IX. On May 26, 2016 the board announced that "Ken Starr will no longer serve in the role of President of Baylor University effective May 31," that head football coach Art Briles had been suspended with intent to terminate and athletic director Ian McCaw sanctioned and placed on probation. It reported findings of "a fundamental failure by Baylor to implement Title IX," that "[a]ctions by University administrators directly discouraged some complainants from reporting or participating in student conduct processes and in one instance constituted retaliation against a complainant for reporting sexual assault," and "significant concerns about the tone and culture within Baylor's football program." The board chair, Richard Willis, said: "We were horrified by the extent of these acts of sexual violence on our campus."⁶

Starr also left the chancellorship in 2016. He later joined Donald Trump's defense team for the first impeachment trial in the Senate, and died in Houston on September 13, 2022 of complications related to surgery.³