Trump Misstates Nadler’s Position on Starr Report

President Donald Trump got his facts wrong when he said Rep. Jerrold Nadler “thought the concept of giving the Starr report” about President Bill Clinton “was absolutely something you could never do” in 1998.

Nadler wasn’t against releasing any of the details from the Starr report to either Congress or the public, as Trump claimed. In fact, after completing his four-year investigation of Clinton, including Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, independent counsel Kenneth Starr turned over the full 445-page report, along with an additional 2,000-plus pages of supporting materials, directly to the House of Representatives on Sept. 9, 1998. After that, House members debated when and how much of the report should be made public.

In an later that day, Nadler, who was a member of the House Judiciary Committee at the time, did say that much of the report’s supporting documentation, including grand jury testimony, was “material that by law … must be kept secret,” and that the documents included “statements that may or may not be true by various witnesses, salacious material,