Monica Lewinsky Has ‘Complicated Feelings’ About Ken Starr’s Death

Starr’s investigation led to the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton and discovery of his affair with Lewinsky, then a White House intern

Monica Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton, Ken Starr in 1998
Monica Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton, Ken Starr in 1998 (Getty Images)

How does Monica Lewinsky feel about Ken Starr, the lawyer who forced her to testify about the most intimate details of her affair with then-President Bill Clinton? It’s “complicated,” says the former White House intern, who became a household name (and frequent butt of jokes) thanks to the 1998 impeachment trial.

Commenting on Starr’s death on Thursday, Lewinsky wrote, “As I’m sure many can understand, my thoughts about Ken Starr bring up complicated feelings… but of more importance, is that i imagine it’s a painful loss for those who love him.”

As The New York Times summed up in its obituary, “[Starr] became a Rorschach test for the post-Cold War generation, a hero to his admirers for taking on in their view an indecent president who despoiled the Oval Office and a villain to his detractors, who saw him as a sex-obsessed Inspector Javert driven by partisanship.”

The Times quoted an email from Starr’s widow in which she called him, “brilliant, kind and loving” and insisted that he “did not have a mean bone in his body.”

In his 2018 memoir, Starr wrote that he had reconsidered his role in the Lewinsky-Clinton affair. “I deeply regret that I took on the Lewinsky phase of the investigation,” he wrote. “But at the same time, as I still see it 20 years later, there was no practical alternative to my doing so.”

Starr was back in the news in 2020 when he defended then-President Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial, referring to the proceedings as a partisan act in “the Age of Impeachment.”

Lewinsky revisited her turbulent time in the spotlight by telling her side of the story as a consultant on Ryan Murphy’s “American Crime Story: Impeachment” in 2021. Beanie Feldstein portrayed the intern in the limited series, with Dan Bakkedahl of “Veep” as Starr.

Knowing what Lewinsky had been through, Feldstein felt protective of her real-life counterpart. “She was incredibly giving,” the actress said before the FX series premiered. “And I made it very clear to her when we started filming that I saw myself as her bodyguard. I was like, ‘I’m putting my body in for you. I’m going to protect you. I have your back. I know your heart.’”

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