How did the Starr Report define 'sexual relations' between Clinton and Lewinsky under its legal standards?

1. How Starr turned a phrase into a legal hinge

Ken Starr’s team treated Clinton’s denial that he had “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky as the pivotal factual claim that could be perjury if it was false; the report therefore parsed specific episodes and physical evidence to determine whether the president’s description matched what prosecutors characterize as the legally relevant acts ^{[1] [2]}. The inquiry was not simply rhetorical — the independent counsel convened a grand jury, secured Lewinsky’s immunity, and relied on both testimony and physical forensic evidence (notably the blue dress DNA) to decide if the deposition statement was untrue under the law ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

2. The evidentiary weight: dress, testimony and chronology

Starr’s report marshaled a mix of documentary records, grand‑jury transcripts and forensic results. The blue dress with a semen stain that DNA testing linked to Clinton is repeatedly cited in contemporary summaries as a central factual basis for concluding that certain sexual acts occurred; reporters and the report itself used that finding to argue the president’s sworn denials were false ^{[3] [2]}. The report also set out detailed timelines of encounters Lewinsky and other witnesses described, treating them as evidence relevant to whether the legal definition covered those contacts ^{[6] [7]}.

3. What “sexual relations” meant in prosecutorial practice

Contemporary accounts and the report’s public extracts show prosecutors translating ordinary‑language denials into whether specific physical acts — as described in grand‑jury testimony and corroborated by ancillary evidence — constituted the type of conduct the president denied under oath ^{[1] [4]}. Press coverage at the time emphasized that Starr described multiple “sexual encounters,” including oral sex, and argued those acts fell within the meaning that made Clinton’s deposition statement potentially perjurious ^{[7] [8]}.

4. Disputes over specificity and prosecutorial choices

Observers and later analyses criticized Starr for exhaustive and explicit detail; some commentators argued the report could have handled the legal question without publishing salacious particulars, while Starr’s office countered that the specifics were necessary to establish the elements of perjury and obstruction ^{[7] [8]}. The press studies cited show debate over whether media coverage and prosecutorial disclosure overstated some lines of inquiry or selectively emphasized certain threads of evidence ^[9].

5. Limits of available reporting on the exact legal gloss

The search results here include the Starr Report text archives and contemporary summaries but do not, in the items provided, quote a single neat statutory definition placed in the report that says verbatim “sexual relations means….” The public excerpts and press coverage make clear Starr applied a prosecutorial standard — combining witness accounts and forensic proof — to conclude Clinton’s denials were false, but the exact legal formulation Starr used in his internal pleadings or memoranda is not reproduced in the materials cited here ^{[4] [5] [1]}.

6. Competing perspectives and political context

Supporters of Starr argued that the report’s detail was necessary to show willful falsehood and obstruction; critics said the graphic cataloguing served political or sensational ends and could have been narrower while still addressing true‑and‑false questions in Clinton’s testimony ^{[7] [9]}. Reporting at the time and later summaries document both lines of argument: one stresses the forensic and testimonial proof (including the dress), the other stresses discretion and proportionality in publicizing intimate details ^{[3] [7]}.

Conclusion — what we can reliably say from these sources

From the materials provided, Starr treated “sexual relations” as a legal hinge: he mapped alleged acts and physical evidence against Clinton’s sworn denial and concluded the testimony was perjurious when viewed through the prosecutorial lens he applied, relying heavily on Lewinsky’s grand‑jury testimony and the DNA evidence from the dress ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Available sources do not mention an exact verbatim statutory definition of “sexual relations” printed in the excerpts here; they instead document how the report operationalized the term through enumerated acts and evidentiary detail ^{[4] [5]}.