Starr Loses Name-Game Battle With Uncle Sam in High Court
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WASHINGTON — Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr doesn’t like the name of the Whitewater case filed with the Supreme Court this week: “Office of the President vs. Office of Independent Counsel.”
Starr wanted his part of the title to be “the United States” and wrote a letter to the court clerk explaining why and citing past cases where an independent counsel was called “the United States” in a case title.
But Andrew L. Frey, the private lawyer representing the White House, who chose the title, responded that each side in the case “is unquestionably presenting its best understanding of the institutional interests of the United States.”
Starr lost the battle. The high court clerk, William K. Suter, decided to stick with Frey’s title.
The court is weeks away from a decision in the case--whether it will review a lower court order to give Whitewater investigators access to notes of White House lawyers from conversations with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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