Public opinion analyst Karlyn Bowman said on Wednesday that former special counsel Ken Starr sustained more damage from his investigation into President Clinton than special counsel Robert Mueller has during his probe into the Trump administration.
“Starr was more damaged, there’s no question about that,” Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.”
“People just didn’t want to go into the tawdry details of what Clinton was involved in,” she continued. “This [Mueller’s probe] is a little bit different in many ways, but your personal life and sexual escapades, I think the public just didn’t want to go there.”
Starr led investigations into former President Clinton’s Whitewater real estate investments, as well as matters surrounding Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
A Gallup poll released in March of 1999 found that 64 percent of Americans said they disapproved of Starr’s job as independent counsel, while only 28 percent of respondents said they approved.
Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia has been largely supported by the public throughout the investigation, according to polls.
An American Barometer survey released on Wednesday found that 58 percent of registered voters believe that Mueller’s probe is unbiased, while 42 percent said it was biased.
President Trump has repeatedly lambasted the probe as a politically motivated witch hunt.
— Julia Manchester
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