Monica Lewinsky says Ken Starr’s death brings ‘complicated feelings’

by Julia Mueller - 09/14/22 7:29 PM ET

FILE – Monica Lewinsky attends the Cannes Lions 2015, International Advertising Festival in Cannes, southern France, on June 25, 2015. Lewinsky had a tempered, compassionate response to the death Tuesday of Ken Starr, the former independent counsel whose investigation of Bill Clinton helped reveal her affair with the president and, she once wrote, make her life a “living hell.” (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau, File)

Monica Lewinsky on Tuesday responded to the death of former U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr, who led the Whitewater investigation into former President Clinton and his relationship with the then-White House intern.

“As I’m sure many can understand, my thoughts about Ken Starr bring up complicated feelings… but of more importance, is that I imagine it’s a painful loss for those who love him,” Lewinsky shared on Twitter Tuesday after news of Starr’s passing broke.

The Whitewater investigation was initially an examination of Clinton’s real estate dealings and work on the Whitewater Development Corporation, but later expanded to encompass Clinton’s relationship with then-intern Lewinsky.

The ordeal, which forced Lewinsky into the limelight, eventually made her a self-dubbed “anti-bullying activist.”

She was an executive producer of the 2021 HBO Max documentary “15 Minutes of Shame,” which looked at the culture of public shaming, and a producer for FX’s “American Crime Story: Impeachment,” which chronicles Lewinsky’s relationship with Clinton and the surrounding events, including the release of “The Starr Report.”

The prosecutor’s 1998 report to Congress shared explicit details of the relationship and argued that Clinton had lied to the American people about the affair, suggesting the lie may be grounds for impeachment.

Clinton was impeached, but then was acquitted in the Senate.

Starr wrote in a 2018 memoir, “I deeply regret that I took on the Lewinsky phase of the investigation. But at the same time, as I still see it twenty years later, there was no practical alternative to my doing so,” as quoted in The New York Times.

More than two decades after the Starr report was released, Starr joined former President Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial in 2020. He died Tuesday in Houston, Texas, at age 76.