Former U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr — who served as independent counsel in the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations during Bill Clinton William (Bill) Jefferson ClintonAnxious Democrats amp up pressure for vote on COVID-19 aid Barr's Russia investigator has put some focus on Clinton Foundation: report Epstein podcast host says he affiliated with elites from 'both sides of the aisle' MORE's presidency — urged President Trump not to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, calling such a move "singularly ill-advised."

"Subject to the possibility of being fired for 'good cause,' Mueller should be allowed to do his work unhindered and unimpeded," Starr wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post. "Absent the most extreme circumstances, the president would be singularly ill-advised to threaten, much less order, Mueller’s firing."

The plea comes days after NewsMax CEO Chris Ruddy, a close friend of Trump, said in interviews that the president was considering ousting Mueller, who was appointed last month to lead the Justice Department investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

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The White House tamped down that notion this week, saying that Trump had "no intention" of firing Mueller, though he "has the right to."

Starr argued, however, that ousting the special counsel would be a complex process with inevitable political fallout. What's more, he wrote, it would ultimately fall on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to make that call.

"As a matter of honor, and in light of his sworn testimony before Congress, Rosenstein would inevitably resign if confronted with a White House directive to dismiss the special counsel," he wrote. "Wisdom counsels strongly against unleashing a 21st-century version of the Saturday Night Massacre of Watergate-era infamy."

Trump has frequently assailed the investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election and his campaign's ties to Moscow as a "witch hunt" and has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia.

That investigation, however, has expanded to include a probe into whether Trump himself sought to obstruct justice. The president has come under scrutiny for a February meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey, in which he asked the top cop to end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

In that meeting, Trump reportedly told Comey that he hoped the FBI director would "let this go," referring to the Flynn probe.

"Notwithstanding reports that the special counsel has launched an inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice, the early returns also suggest the absence of any Oval Office criminality, even with the unsettling use of Trump Tower business methods where they don’t belong," Starr wrote.

"To 'hope' that the director would abandon a line of inquiry is most naturally read as pleading and cajoling, but not as an order. In any event, at the time Comey didn’t treat the president’s words as a directive."