Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein and Me

[Nevilledog]

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Dirk Schwenk (Esq) 🎵
@DirkSchwenk
A powerful story of awakening to the shameless evil of Ken Starr. @marykerry @MelissaJPeltier

Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein and Me
As a former professional partisan, I never thought I’d look back decades to my political beginnings and find the map that points to our…
medium.com
6:39 AM · Jul 13, 2021

https://medium.com/judihershman/ken-starr-brett-kavanaugh-jeffrey-epstein-and-me-ba2dbf77b0da

As a former professional partisan, I never thought I’d look back decades to my political beginnings and find the map that points to our current moment, when there is serious doubt whether the democracy we took for granted at the time will continue to exist. Despite all the posturing and gamesmanship and at times skullduggery back then, political opponents shared an understanding that the process enforced by our Constitution would prevail, no one would get everything they wanted every time, and the state of the union would remain strong. As it turns out, too many people like me stuck our heads in the sand, swallowed our doubts, let the unacceptable slide, convinced ourselves it was in the interest of the greater good, and never dreamed that we would look back and realize that a failure to say “Enough!” had led to our country’s biggest existential crisis since the Civil War.

I entered what as I now see as our long national unraveling during the Clinton impeachment, as an adviser to independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, and over the next couple of decades as I remained personally and professionally dedicated to him. Only in the last three years, thanks to the hold of an unhinged liar and mega-grifter on my party and so it seems my old mentor, have I been able to recognize that Starr has been at the intersection of so many wrong turns our country has made. And now, as he attaches himself to a new presidential prospect and joins former Vice President Mike Pence at a Family Leadership Summit in Iowa this coming weekend, it has become clear to me that I am morally — indeed patriotically — obligated to speak up for the moral decency my old mentor continues to violate in the name of moral decency.

It is undeniably fitting that this account should turn on the cliché of the scarlet letter. For somehow Starr’s role as the nation’s parson always comes back around to sex. Perhaps his fascination was heightened early on by his involvement in the Packwood Diaries scandal, but most notably, of course, was his 1998 pursuit of former president Clinton over his sexual relationship with a White House intern, which was bookended by his recent impeachment foray, this time defending an adulterous President, who lies about so much more sin than that. And in between he zealously took up the cause of a Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual assault, Jeffrey Epstein, a Baylor University football player accused of rape and even a schoolteacher in suburban Virginia found guilty of molesting 5 young school girls. And even still, in 2021, he published his latest book extolling the virtues of intersecting religion and the judiciary. Starr is “all in” for ramming the most extreme of White conservative judges, experienced or not, that will decide human fates based on Christian beliefs into federal, life-tenured seats. Forget the separation of church and state! That’s not what the founding fathers intended according to him.

I can date the beginning of my own rebirth to July 9, 2018, the day Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court. I sent Starr a text saying, “You said to me 20 years ago, that Brett was ‘going places’ Clearly!” [punctuation sic] It was my first communication to Starr in memory that went unanswered, and I wondered if he picked up that my message had a bit of an edge. I had met Kavanaugh in 1998 when he was a 33-year-old member of then, Independent Counsel Starr’s team investigating Bill Clinton, and I was a 39-year-old strategic communications consultant hired to help prep Starr to present Congress with his legendary report detailing President Bill Clinton’s sexual interactions with a Monica Lewinsky. One day after a meeting at the independent counsel offices, I was alone in a conference room collecting materials when Kavanaugh entered. He began berating me and invading my personal space in a deranged fury that sent me into flight around the table.

*snip*

[Faux pas]

1. I

can't find the rest of the story at that link??

[Nevilledog]

2. Fixed it.....the @ in the original link killed it.....weird

[Faux pas]

4. Thank you!

[FakeNoose]

3. K & R - should be noted that the author is Judi Hershman

A lot of dirt and diatribe here but a good read. It seems that Ms. Hershman needed to get something out of her system.

Wondering if this confession is related to the new book coming out by Julie K. Brown, "Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story"? Her book sheds light on the Ken Starr/Jeffrey Epstein/Alex Acosta collaboration. Mr. Brown is the investigative reporter for the Miami Herald who dogged the story of Epstein getting an incredibly light sentence back in 2005 in a shameful plea deal with the DA Acosta.

Kick over any rock, you'll see lots of worms and cockroaches squirming.

[bahboo]

5. well...that was a HELLUVA read....

the hypocrisy knows no bounds....

[herding cats]

6. That was enlightening, to say the least!

Starr is a sleaze ball hypocrite and she laid him bare in that article.

[Grasswire2]

7. I met Kenneth Starr when he was Solicitor General.

The vibe from him was pervy as hell. (shudder)

[Grasswire2]

8. and his hand shake was clammy and damp. nt

[LifeLongDemocratic]

9. Not forgiven

It's like a Nazi soldier realizing what he was a part of and asking for forgiveness. Nope, go to hell. i am tired of these right wing collaborators realizing after the damage is done what they were a part of and personally benefitted from.

[tblue37]

14. The author is a woman, and she also describes having an affair with Starr.

[Hortensis]

16. Yes. Or at least distancing. She confines her "rebirth" to

renouncing the misogyny and distasteful sexual fixations in circles she was part of for years, but they were and are depraved and dishonorable in every other way also. She may not be able to see it that way.

[RANDYWILDMAN]

10. Thick as thieves, evil flocks together....

not only do they know each other, they are friends, party boys stick together.

[themaguffin]

11. While some of this is known, there's a lot here and just wow.

[Hekate]

12. "Always comes back around to sex". It certainly is a helluva read.

“It is undeniably fitting that this account should turn on the cliché of the scarlet letter. For somehow Starr’s role as the nation’s parson always comes back around to sex.”

[BComplex]

13. Holy crap.

I think I'm going to puke.

[Raven]

15. That is exactly what I'm feeling! She disgusts me, Starr disgusts me, they all make me want to take

a shower...after I puke.

[crickets]

19. Agreed.

As others have said, it is a helluva read - but if she's looking for redemption now, it's way too late for that.

[UTUSN]

17. Wow, we thought back then he was just a sanctimonious priss. We've known awhile he's *filth*.

For sure HERSHMAN will be called a disgruntled, shunned woman. Plus, as for STARR's "sham moral authority" and the "harm he has done from the 1990s and now beyond" as he reaches to hook up with PENCE - shudder shudder at the thought of PENCE's next step ever downwards.

At the risk of underestimating the way many of us did about Drumpf, PENCE is just too absurdly a nonentity to succeed.

[UTUSN]

18. Here's Tim O'BRIEN - "Religious & Ethics NewsWeekly - PBS"

[Hekate]

20. Her encounter with an enraged Kavanaugh when he was 33 reinforces my impression of him as ...

…an abusive husband and father.

As for Starr, he disgusted me back in the day, but I underestimated him as being a dangerous sanctimonious prick. This report shows him to be a much greater threat than that. And how the males stand together, grooming each other for high office and rulership!