MSNBC's Ari Melber: 'We just watched Ken Starr punch himself in the face'

(Image credit: Brad Barket/Getty Images)

last updated 28 January 2020

The irony of Ken Starr declaring that the Senate is "being called to sit as the high court of impeachment all too frequently" was not lost on MSNBC's Ari Melber.

Starr, the former independent counsel who pushed for President Bill Clinton's impeachment, is now one of President Trump's impeachment defense lawyers. He made his debut on Monday, likening impeachment to "domestic war" and asking, "How did we get here, with presidential impeachment invoked frequently?"

When Starr was the independent counsel, he was a driving force behind Republican efforts in the House to investigate Clinton, and his Starr Report found that Clinton's conduct "may constitute grounds for impeachment." In 1998, his ethics adviser, Sam Dash, quit, writing in a letter to Starr, "You have violated your obligations under the independent counsel statute and have unlawfully intruded on the power of impeachment."

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On Twitter, Melber said Starr's opening was "BEYOND RICH coming from him." Later, he told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace: "This was a disaster for Republicans. A total unmitigated legal and constitutional disaster. Ken Starr at no point in this, dramatic at times, mournful opening explained in any factual or legal way what's different." This was "Starr vs. Starr," Melber continued. "Usually you want someone else's name on the other side. He was out there shadowboxing against himself. ... Constitutionally, we watched Ken Starr punch himself in the face and then walk off the floor." 

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.