A new book claims that former U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr tried to get the Department of Justice to drop a sex-trafficking case against financier Jeffrey Epstein, the Guardian reports.
The allegation is contained in the forthcoming Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown, a reporter who covered Epstein for the Miami Herald.
Starr, who led the investigation that had resulted in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998, “used his political connections in the White House to get the Justice Department to review Epstein’s case,” Brown writes in the book.
Epstein was convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution, and served over a year in prison, much of that on work release. He was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges and died in jail not long after; his death was ruled a suicide.
Starr’s lobbying was related to the 2008 case, which ended in a controversial plea deal. Starr, along with Jay Lefkowitz, Epstein’s lawyer at the time, sent emails and letters “campaigning to pressure the Justice Department to drop the case.”
One such letter was sent by Starr to Mark Filip, who at the time was the U.S. Deputy Attorney General. Starr told Filip, a former colleague, that he believed prosecutors were trying to negotiate a deal that would somehow benefit the prosecutors’ friends.
Prosecutors did eventually reach a plea deal with Epstein, but it was very favorable to the disgraced financier. He only served 13 months, living part-time in an unlocked cell while working out of his private office most of the time.
Perversion of Justice will be published by Dey Street Books on July 20.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
