Thought for the day
March 12, 1999
With the Attorney General and indeed, many in the Department of Justice closing in upon Kenneth Starr, today he withdrew his support from longtime spokesman Charles G. Bakaly III and accepted his resignation "with regret." Additionally, he claims he is turning over results of an internal investigation showing that Chuck Bakaly illegally leaked secrets (but the DOJ hasn't received the report yet. I wonder if Starr will make the same silly-assed production out of driving the boxes of paper over to the capitol as he did for President Clinton?)
We've all known for a long time that the office of the right-wing beholden Starr was breaking the law and leaking grand jury testimony while misleading the DOJ by being in cahoots with the Paula Jones legal team. But now Starr is worried how he might be held accountable for his excesses and his failures.
It was one thing to play fast and loose with the law when he had all the Republicans (and some of the population in general) thinking he might actually find some crimes that the President committed. But all he was able to uncover was a stupid affair with a beautiful young staffer. During impeachment testimony, Starr had to admit that his investigation had actually CLEARED THE CLINTONS OF ALL WHITEWATER CHARGES! In fact, he exonerated President and Mrs. Clinton on all charges relating to ALL other investigations including the so-called "file-gate" and "travel-office-gate." His charges to the U.S. House were so weak that the only reason they passed was that the lame-duck Republicans saw this as their last-best chance to strike at the President before being sent home. Some Republican-Reps even admitted that while they voted to impeach, they didn't want the President to actually be removed from office. They just saw impeachment as a great partisan way to attack a good man.
So what is going on over in the OIC? Now that Starr has failed in his "Melon-Scaife" directed mandate to "get" the President at all costs his methods are coming under scrutiny. It would be easier for Republicans to defend him if he had produced results. But the case was so weak and based solely upon an unrelated sexual relationship that the Republican majority couldn't even get a simple majority in the trial!
Now Starr has been reduced to abandoning his supporters to help deflect charges that he has actually been behind the dirty-tricks by his office. So good-bye Bakaly! Don't worry, you won't be the only unemployed lawyer from Starr's team.
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