Ken Starr: Evidence to impeach a president should be 'overwhelming' and this is not
Former independent counsel Ken Starr doubted whether the Democrats have laid out an "overwhelming" case for impeachment.
Former Independent Counsel Ken Starr said Wednesday that the evidence House Democrats have in the case to impeach President Trump is "not even close" to overwhelming.
Appearing on "America's Newsroom" with host Bill Hemmer, Starr said that Wednesday's House vote on two articles of impeachment is a "political exercise."
"The evidence, whether it's circumstantial or direct -- and I think it's virtually entirely circumstantial -- has to be overwhelming not just beyond a reasonable doubt...overwhelming to the American people who are not sitting in a courtroom and listening to every witness testify and drawing interferences and so forth," he said.
The debate in the House kicked off in earnest shortly after noon on Wednesday amid fierce objections from Republicans as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., declared Democrats have "no choice" but to impeach.
The president was scheduled to hold a campaign rally in Battle Creek, Mich Wednesday, but continued to be vocal on Twitter decrying "ATROCIOUS LIES BY THE RADICAL LEFT" who he claimed were assaulting both America and the GOP:
The president later quoted Starr on Twitter: "The evidence has to be overwhelming, and it is not. It's not even close."
Starr told Hemmer that the president has to have done something "so profoundly wrong that the republic is in some sort of danger if he continues."
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"And, that is what the Democrats have been doing. They've been taking what I view as a very thin evidentiary record and transmogrifying it and creating a national security risk as well as an intervention -- in invited intervention -- into U.S. policies," he said. "And, I think both those themes are really quite farfetched."
"It really is not a strong case," he noted, later saying that "this will go down as the most partisan impeachment in the history of the republic."
Fox News' Marisa Schultz contributed to this report.
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