Linda Tripp - Tripp's Involvement in The Lewinsky Scandal

Tripp's Involvement in The Lewinsky Scandal

Tripp became a close confidante of another former White House employee, Monica Lewinsky, while they both worked in the Pentagon's public affairs office. According to Tripp, who is about 24 years older than Lewinsky, they knew one another for a year and a half before the scandal began to reach its critical stage. After Lewinsky revealed to Tripp that she had been in a physical relationship with President Clinton, Tripp, acting on the advice of literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, began to secretly record phone conversations with Lewinsky while encouraging Lewinsky to document details of her relationship with the president.

In August 1997, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reported that Tripp said she had encountered Kathleen Willey coming out of the Oval Office "disheveled. Her face red and her lipstick was off." Willey alleged that Clinton groped her. Clinton's lawyer, Robert S. Bennett said in the Newsweek article that "Linda Tripp is not to be believed."

In January 1998, Tripp gave the surreptitiously recorded tapes to then-Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Tripp disclosed to Starr that she was aware of the relationship between Lewinsky and President Clinton, that Lewinsky had executed a false affidavit denying the relationship that was submitted to the federal court in Arkansas in the Jones v. Clinton lawsuit, and that Lewinsky had attempted to suborn Tripp's perjury in the Jones v. Clinton suit to conceal the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship as well as Tripp's claim regarding Kathleen Willey from the federal court. As Tripp explained, she was being solicited to commit a crime to conceal evidence in the Jones civil rights case. Tripp also informed Starr of the existence of a navy blue dress that Lewinsky owned that was soiled with Clinton's semen. During their friendship, Lewinsky had shown the dress to Tripp and said she intended to have it dry-cleaned; Tripp convinced her not to by providing various spurious reasons such as Lewinsky looking fat in it and the dress being Lewinsky's "ultimate protection".

Based on Tripp’s tapes, Starr obtained approval from Attorney General Janet Reno and the special court overseeing the Independent Counsel to expand Starr's investigation into the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship, looking for potential incidents of perjury, to investigate Lewinsky for perjury and suborning perjury as a witness in the lawsuit Paula Jones had brought against Clinton.

While Tripp maintains she acted out of "patriotic duty," some Americans believe that she betrayed Lewinsky in the hopes of using her knowledge of the relationship to obtain a possible book or movie deal, neither of which has occurred to date. Tripp has claimed that she taped Lewinsky out of self-defense, as she feared retaliation from the Clinton Administration, also claiming Lewinsky had assured President Clinton that she had only told Tripp about their affair (which was untrue), thus making her a target as she refused to go along with perjuring herself to protect Lewinsky and the President.

Eventually both Clinton and Lewinsky had to appear before a Washington, D.C., grand jury to answer questions, although Clinton appeared via closed circuit television. After the round of interrogation, the jurors offered Lewinsky the chance to offer any last words. "I hate Linda Tripp," she said.

Tripp was portrayed by John Goodman in recurring Saturday Night Live sketches. Tripp liked most of Goodman’s impersonations of her, except for one, which hurt her feelings, in which he portrayed her as a man.