Monica Lewinsky weighs in on Ken Starr's death: 'I imagine it's painful loss for those who love him'

Monica Lewinsky captured her thoughts about the death of Ken Starr, the former independent counsel who helped uncover her affair with former President Bill Clinton, saying in a tweet,  "I imagine it’s a painful loss," for his loved ones.

Starr investigated the former president and his wife, Hillary Clinton, for years, including an investigation into an Arkansas real estate deal the couple was involved in. He died Tuesday at age 76.

“As I’m sure many can understand, my thoughts about ken starr bring up complicated feelings,” Lewinsky said Tuesday on Twitter. “But of more importance, is that I imagine it’s a painful loss for those who love him.”

Lewinsky, who interned at the White House in the mid-1990s, had sexual relations with Clinton. The investigation into that relationship led to Clinton’s impeachment and almost removed him from office.

She has said she was interrogated for hours in 1998 by Starr’s prosecutors and was threatened with prison if she did not cooperate with the investigation, a demand she initially refused.

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Starr's prosecutors learned of the affair from former White House staffer Linda Tripp who had been recording her conversations with Lewinsky about Clinton during their time at the White House.

He also issued the Starr Report, the findings of the independent counsel’s investigation, and it served as the basis of the Republican’s impeachment case against Clinton.

Lewinsky became Starr's key witness in the impeachment trial against Clinton.

Lewinsky later said she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, mostly because of "having been publicly outed and ostracized.'' She also for years was subjected to jokes about the affair.

Lewinsky wrote in a Vanity Fair essay in 2018, that she recalls seeing Starr at a restaurant while she was out with her family, and said that "his demeanor, almost pastoral, was somewhere between avuncular and creepy. He kept touching my arm and elbow, which made me uncomfortable."

She gave a TED Talk in 2015 called the “The Price of Shame,” and has become an anti-bullying activist.

Starr would later write in his book "Contempt: A memoir of the Clinton Investigation,'' that "I deeply regret that I took on the Lewinsky phase of the investigation. But at the same time, as I still see it twenty years later, there was no practical alternative to my doing so."

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Monica Lewinsky on Ken Starr's death: 'I imagine it's a painful loss'