The Clinton-era independent counsel weighs in on Brett Kavanaugh, why Trump has an obligation to answer Mueller's questions and whether he plans to support Trump in 2020.

Ken Starr would love to hear from Donald Trump. He thinks he could help. The former independent counsel whose investigation into President Bill Clinton led to Clinton’s impeachment says President Trump has enough to be worried about that he’ll need good lawyers around him as he decides whether to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller. “If I’m on [Trump’s] criminal defense team, I would be very concerned,” Starr said in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast. “I don’t know what President Trump knows, but there have been a number of guilty pleas. Some of those guilty pleas go to false statements, so I would just be cautious” before answering questions from Muller.  Starr says he’d advise this even while he believes that Trump has a duty to answer investigators’ questions under oath, just as Bill Clinton did 20 years ago. “He is the president of the United States, and I think that carries with it an obligation to cooperate with duly-authorized federal investigations,” Starr said.

“You’re not above the law. You think you’ve got a time-out based upon your service as president. We respect you, you are occupying the presidency, you have a very important job,” Starr said. “But there’s no time out. You have to respond when you’re summoned to the bar of justice. That’s the way I respond to all this. You have to be a rule of law person if you’re going to occupy a position of trust.” As he promotes his new memoir, “Contempt,” Starr—who says he probably wouldn’t have written the book if Hillary Clinton had won, reasoning that it would have damaged her presidency unfairly—says “President Trump would be well-advised” to a take lesson from the book to heart: rules matter. “Facts will come back to haunt you eventually,” said Starr. “The truth ends up coming out, and so you better deal with those facts.”

POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear. Get more at politico.com/podcasts/off-message

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