Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky said the death of Ken Starr, the attorney whose probe of Bill Clinton exposed her affair with the former president, evoked “complicated feelings” but acknowledged that his loss was “painful” for those who love him.
“As I’m sure many can understand, my thoughts about Ken Starr bring up complicated feelings … but of more importance, is that I imagine it’s a painful loss for those who love him,” Lewinsky tweeted shortly after Starr’s family confirmed his death Tuesday at the age of 76.
Starr died at a hospital Tuesday of complications from surgery, according to his former colleague, attorney Mark Lanier. He said Starr had been hospitalized in an intensive care unit in Houston for about four months.
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In a probe that lasted five years, Starr looked into fraudulent real estate deals involving a long-time Clinton associate, delved into the removal of documents from the office of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster after his suicide. The investigation of Clinton’s intimate relationship with Lewinsky was a Washington spectacle.
Lewinsky went to work at the White House as an intern in 1995. During the government shutdown late that year, she and Clinton had a sexual encounter in a hallway near the Oval Office, the first of 10 sexual encounters over the next year and a half.
Lewinsky confided the affair to a co-worker, Linda Tripp, who tape-recorded some of their conversations and brought the tapes to Starr’s prosecutors. Lewinsky was granted immunity from prosecution and became Starr’s chief witness against the president, who had denied having sexual relations with Lewinsky.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
