Ken Starr, the man who produced what is known as the Ken Starr Report which led to the impeachment of President Clinton recently appeared on Fox News to talk with Neil Cavuto about the possible impeachment of President Trump.
Starr suggested that the impeachment proceedings would be fruitless and presented some history to back it up.
Starr said, “I say that because impeachment is doomed to fail given what we know. Now, obviously the facts are flowing in. In the history of the country, obviously presidential efforts to impeach do not work. That we know, but guess what? Of the 62 impeachment proceedings … eight have resulted in convictions…”
That’s a 13% success rate for conviction.
Starr also continued noting that this proceeding is not going to lead to a conviction and that it is worthless to pursue.
“This is not going to result in a conviction, and so why are we on the impeachment train? We should be on the oversight train, and quit calling it impeachment – especially since there really is something quite profoundly wrong under our Constitution to call it impeachment – that we’re on a formal impeachment inquiry. No, with all due respect. Until the House of Representatives votes as a body to conduct an impeachment inquiry or investigation, there is simply action by committees that’s been sanctioned by the speaker. It sounds like a structural point, but guess what? We live by structure in our constitutional republic.”
Cavuto challenged Starr claiming that people said the same thing about Nixon when the process started with his impeachment as well. Starr responded, “Well, that’s right, but the tide turned when it became clear that there were White House tapes, as you said – by the way, that was not revealed by the House Judiciary Committee, but by an oversight committee … we now know the basic facts, or at least we think we know the basic facts because the president, wisely or no, released the transcript. That’s what this is all about – the interpretation of that conversation that the president had with the president of Ukraine.“