In an interview with Fox News broadcast on Saturday, former independent counsel Ken Starr said that the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump is “doomed to fail,” Mediaite reports.
Starr, who is best known for investigating former President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, told host Neil Cavuto on Cavuto Live Saturday that history has shown that impeachment inquiries simply do not work.
Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, largely thanks to Starr’s work, but was later acquitted in the Senate.
“Impeachment is doomed to fail given what we know. The facts are flowing in. In the history of the country, obviously presidential efforts to impeach do not work,” Starr said.
Because the inquiry will not result in Trump getting impeached and removed since the Republican Party controls the Senate, according to Starr, the investigation should not even be described as an impeachment investigation.
“This will not result in a conviction, so why are we on the impeachment train, we should be on the oversight train, and quit calling it impeachment,” he said.
The lawyer also commented on the substance of the allegations against Trump, arguing that the president’s actions are not actually criminal.
Starr analyzed the transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which the president appeared to pressure his Ukrainian counterpart by — impeachment advocates claim — threatening to cut military aid unless the eastern European country’s government complies with his requests.
According to Starr, Trump made a mistake by using the word “reciprocity” during his correspondence with Zelensky, but that does not necessarily mean that there is a crime that he can be charged with.
“He used a word that was very very wrong: reciprocity. ‘We need reciprocity,’ I’m embellishing but that is not a crime. It is poor judgment by the president. He should not have done that,” Starr concluded.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump, accusing the president of collaborating with a foreign government to damage a political opponent’s campaign.
Trump, according to a whistleblower complaint made available to the public, pressured Ukraine into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden’s son’s business endeavors in the country. The president allegedly threatened to cancel military aid, unless Ukraine does as he says.
ICYMI: President Trump pushes back after Democrats announce launch of the impeachment inquiry.
“It’s all a big hoax.” pic.twitter.com/3c2VMjyg44
— BlazeTV (@BlazeTV) September 28, 2019
Both Trump and his Republican allies claim that there was no quid pro quo, and that the president did therefore not commit an impeachable offense.
According to Trump, the impeachment inquiry is yet another “witch hunt,” another attempt by the Democratic Party to remove him from the White House.