Ken Starr, prosecutor in Whitewater Clinton probe, dead at 76

• Ken Starr, who led the Whitewater investigation into members of the Clinton administration, has died.
• His family announced Tuesday that Starr died from complications from surgery at a Texas hospital.
• Starr also served as a United States circuit judge and the 39th solicitor general.

Kenneth Starr, a judicial appointee and solicitor general who led the Whitewater investigation into former President Bill Clinton, is dead at 76, according to a statement from his family.

The lawyer had a long and distinguished career as a United States circuit judge, the 39th solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush, and president and chancellor of Baylor University.

He was best known for leading the Whitewater investigation into members of the Clinton administration in the mid-1990s.

Starr died on Tuesday at a hospital in Houston due to complications from surgery, the statement said.

Replacing prosecutor Robert B. Fiske out of concerns of a conflict of interest, Starr was appointed in 1994 to investigate the Clintons' and their associates' real estate investment in Whitewater Development Corporation in Arkansas. At the time, Bill Clinton was the state attorney general and was soon elected governor.

More than three years after his appointment, following a series of subpoenas, convictions, and Bill Clinton's successful presidential bid, Starr expanded the probe into the president's personal affairs. The prosecutor was investigating whether Clinton committed perjury by directing Monica Lewinsky, then a 24-year-old White House intern, to lie under oath about their sexual relationship.

Clinton was the second US president in history to be impeached. He was acquitted by the Senate in 1999.

Years later, when it became all but certain that Donald Trump would be the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, Starr praised Clinton as "the most gifted politician of the baby boomer generation."

Starr appeared to make those statements as Trump resurfaced the prosecutor's investigations in order to attack his opposing candidate at the time, Hilary Clinton, according to The New York Times.

Starr was later named the 14th president of Baylor University in 2010 and chancellor in 2013. He was fired from his position in 2016, after he was accused of mishandling sexual assault allegations involving at least 17 women, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

His name briefly reemerged in the spotlight in 2020 when Donald Trump recruited the attorney to be a part of his defense team in his impeachment trial.

During the trial, Starr argued before the Senate that impeachments were being used "too frequently." 

"Instead of a once-in-a-century phenomenon, which it had been, presidential impeachment has become a weapon to be wielded against one's political opponent," he said.