For the better part of his tenure, I’ve tried to be fair to former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. The establishment press beat him mercilessly, the Clinton administration lied to him and stonewalled him repeatedly and the courts didn’t do much for him either. But after seeing what he and his office is planning to do to Linda Tripp, I have lost all respect for this man, his idea of “justice” and the so-called “principles” he allegedly represented.
As many people know, Tripp has been charged by the state of Maryland for illegally taping her now infamous conversations with former Clinton lap-dancer Monica Lewinsky. There is no doubt in my mind that this charge is politically motivated; there is also no doubt in my mind that Starr and his independent counsel staff know this charge is politically motivated.
Maybe Starr has spent too much time around Clinton and his minions, but that is no excuse for what his office did to Tripp in court on Monday. According to a Reuters story, Starr’s office now says they did not “guarantee” her immunity from state prosecution for making those 20-odd tapes they subpoenaed for use in Clinton’s impeachment proceedings.
“Investigators from the office of former independent counsel Kenneth Starr instead offered the former White House secretary a grant of immunity that they believed would make it difficult for any state prosecutor to use her recorded conversations as evidence in a criminal proceeding,” Reuters reported.
“We told her the state of Maryland was a separate sovereign (from the federal government) and that they may ultimately be able to return an indictment against her,” Stephen Binhak, a federal prosecutor attached to Starr’s office, said at the start of a hearing in Howard County, Md., Circuit Court.
Jackie Bennett, the Starr deputy who signed Tripp’s immunity letter, said, “What we could do, and intended to do, and did do, was to make the task (of state prosecution) insurmountable,” Reuters said.
It gets better.
Reuters reported that the best form of protection Tripp could hope for, according to Binhak, “was a grant of federal immunity ‘that would make it extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible for the state of Maryland to use those tapes in the prosecution of a criminal case.'”
Then Binhak turned Clintonesque – he blamed Tripp’s current legal quagmire on her.
He told the court, “Mrs. Tripp was not grasping the technicalities” of her legal situation when she first met at her home with four members of Starr’s staff around midnight on Jan. 12, 1998.
In other words, Tripp – intelligent enough to work at both the White House and the Pentagon, receiving good performance evaluations for both – was not intelligent enough to understand that she had not been promised immunity. Oh.
Instead, Starr’s office is claiming they only threw up roadblocks they “believed” would be “impossible” for Maryland to use in a prosecution.
That’s pure legalese BS. What about Starr’s grant of immunity to Johnny Chung? To John Huang? To other witnesses who testified on behalf of Starr’s office?
Reuters said, “On Monday, Tripp was absent from court but submitted a sworn affidavit maintaining that she would never have come forward with her evidence against Clinton without Starr’s immunity letter and the later court order to assist investigators.”
Do we have any reason whatsoever to doubt that? Alternately, do we have reasons to doubt Starr’s credibility?
Aside from what his office did to Tripp on Monday, remember that Starr – like his independent counsel predecessors – also concluded that, despite reams of questionable “evidence” not supporting his conclusion, that former White House counsel Vince Foster did indeed commit suicide.
Maybe Tripp should have seen this coming. Since becoming embroiled in the varying aspects of Clinton administration corruption, Tripp tried repeatedly to tell the complete story to Starr and Co. but nobody was listening. As WorldNetDaily reported Jan. 15, 1999, “Linda Tripp reaffirmed earlier testimony that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr never questioned her substantively on issues related to Filegate and other important matters on which she had inside knowledge as an employee of the White House counsel’s office.” Such details included “Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the firings at the White House Travel Office … the misuse of FBI files by the Clinton White House, as well as who may have hired former bouncer Craig Livingstone as White House security chief.”
Starr’s behavior towards the late James McDougal was also questionable. As we reported March 9, 1999, the independent counsel seemed to ignore somebody who could have blown the lid off several Clinton scandals at one time. Ditto for Clinton crony Webster Hubbell.
Knowing all of this, ask yourself a question: If you’re about to take on the president of the United States (especially this president), would you do something that might be construed as a violation of the law without being asked to do so under a guarantee of immunity or protection from a credible federal source?
Of course not. Neither would Linda Tripp.
This woman has been screwed by the White House, the Pentagon, and innumerable officials in this administration since the day she handed those tapes to Starr and his office. Now – in typical Clinton fashion — she’s going to get screwed by Starr and Co. too.
This rat stinks, boys and girls.
If you still trust Ken Starr after all of this, then I’d have to say you’re deliberately fooling yourself. The one thing no one should tolerate is any attempt by the usual conservative cheerleaders to rationalize this travesty – to behave as though Starr is still a “man of integrity.” He’s not; neither are his deputies. To put Linda Tripp in this precarious position, then say – in court – that she “must have misunderstood” the promise of protection made to her, is a betrayal of the highest order. If Tripp “misunderstood” anything, it was the belief that Starr and Co. would abide by their word.
Ken Starr, if you allow this woman to be sacrificed – especially on behalf of this president – then you’re no better than Clinton himself. Be a man and stick to your promise. You owe her that.
