As I write this I am listening to Ken Starr, with his usual chilling, unctuous, sanctimony, rail against the use of impeachment for partisan purposes, insisting that it is being trivialized.
Here he is during the Clinton impeachment:
Here he is today:
Here’s a little reminder of what Starr’s “charges” were all about:
Starr’s investigation climaxed in the fall of 1998 with the publication of a bodice-ripper with an unusually long title: Communication from the Office of the Independent Counsel, Kenneth W. Starr, transmitting appendices to the referral to the United States House of Representatives pursuant to Title 28, United States Code, section 595(c)
As Retropolis reported last year, when publishers in New York rushed out copies, they shortened the title to “The Starr Report,” which was easier to market. The report shot up the bestseller list, in part because it read more like a Danielle Steel novel than a prosecutorial document.
Starr turned to two experienced lawyers/authors on his staff to write the bulk of the 475-page report, including Stephen Bates, who already had written several books and contributed to magazines such as the New Republic and Playboy before penning the ultimate Penthouse Letter.
Readers, including professional readers like book critics and actual authors, immediately noticed the report had an unusual tone and structure. “The prose, far from a dry, factual recitation, contained rich, erotic details of the sort we expect from a book-club romance,” Daniel M. Filler, a prominent law professor, wrote in a California Law Review article.
Here’s an example:
En route to the restroom at about 8 p.m., she passed George Stephanopoulos’s office. The President was inside alone, and he beckoned her to enter. She told him that she had a crush on him. He laughed, then asked if she would like to see his private office. Through a connecting door in Mr. Stephanopoulos’s office, they went through the President’s private dining room toward the study off the Oval Office. Ms. Lewinsky testified: “We talked briefly and sort of acknowledged that there had been a chemistry that was there before and that we were both attracted to each other and then he asked me if he could kiss me.”
Ms. Lewinsky said yes. In the windowless hallway adjacent to the study, they kissed. Before returning to her desk, Ms. Lewinsky wrote down her name and telephone number for the President.At about 10 p.m., in Ms. Lewinsky’s recollection, she was alone in the Chief of Staff’s office and the President approached. He invited her to rendezvous again in Mr. Stephanopoulos’s office in a few minutes, and she agreed. (Asked if she knew why the President wanted to meet with her, Ms. Lewinsky testified: “I had an idea.”)
They met in Mr. Stephanopoulos’s office and went again to the area of the private study. This time the lights in the study were off.
This time.
You might be wondering what happened next. Not to worry — the writers do not leave their audience hanging: “She and the President kissed. She unbuttoned her jacket; either she unhooked her bra or he lifted her bra up; and he touched her breasts with his hands and mouth.
His buddy Kavanaugh helped with that too.
Today he’s defending the man who says he can grab women by the pussy and they let him do it because he’s a star. And he’s complaining that the impeachment of that man because he extorted a foreign government to help him cheat in his election is not an impeachable offense.
I think I can finally see the Trump strategy. Just gaslight us until we finally all go mad.
It’s working.
Update from the “shamelessness in their superpower” files:
In his presentation today he simply pointed out that the House had rejected the argument in 1999 as if he was just a potted plant in the whole proceeding.