Ken Starr made his impeachment debut on Jan. 27 as a member of President Donald Trumps legal defense team with a warning about the growing use of impeachment.
“The Senate is being called to sit as the high court of impeachment all too frequently. Indeed, we are living in what I think can aptly be described as the age of impeachment,” Starr told senators.
Starr, who, as an independent counsel, investigated then-President Bill Clinton ahead of his impeachment trial in the late 1990s, argued that no crimes were committed in Trumps case and sought to undermine House Democrats case.
“Were crimes alleged in the articles in the common law of presidential impeachment? In Nixon, yes. In Clinton, yes. Here, no,” he said.
Impeachment, he argued, should be a last resort to remove a president from office. He urged senators to look to the text of the Constitution to restore the United States history and tradition.
Over the past five decades or so—with the investigation into President Richard Nixon and the independent counsel provision of The Ethics and Government Act of 1978—impeachment has become increasingly used by the House, which is unprecedented in the history of the United States, Starr said.
“But the new chapter was not simply the age of independent counsels. It became, unbeknownst to the American people, the age of impeachment,” Starr said.
Starr played a significant role in investigating Clinton, filing a report that led to his impeachment in the House; Clinton was acquitted in the Senate.
“Instead of a once-in-a-century phenomenon, which it had been, presidential impeachment has become a weapon tRead More – Source
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The Epoch Times
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