Linda Tripp
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Linda Tripp (born Linda Rose Carotenuto on November 24, 1949 in Jersey City, New Jersey) is an American woman who was a central figure in the Lewinsky scandal of 1998 and 1999 that led to the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton.
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Government employment history
Linda Tripp was a White House employee in the George H. W. Bush administration, and kept her job when Bill Clinton took over in 1993. During the summer of 1994 senior White House aides wanted Tripp out, so they arranged a job for her in the public affairs office in the Pentagon which gave her a raise of $20,000 per year.[1].
On January 19, 2001, near the end of the Clinton Administration, Linda Tripp was fired from her job in the Pentagon [2]. Tripp claimed that the firing was vindictive, but the Clinton administration countered that all political appointees like Tripp are normally asked to submit their resignation upon a new administration taking over, and those who refuse are fired.
Tripp's involvment in the Lewinsky scandal
Despite an age difference of 24 years, Tripp became a close confidante of another former White House employee, Monica Lewinsky, when they both worked in the Pentagon's public affairs office. After Lewinsky revealed to Tripp that she had had a physical relationship with President Clinton, Tripp, acting on the advice of her friend Lucianne Goldberg, began to secretly record her phone conversations with Lewinsky while encouraging Lewinsky to document details of the relationship. As a then-resident of Columbia, Maryland, Tripp's surreptitious recordings of the conversations with Lewinsky violated Maryland's wiretap law.
Tripp gave the surreptitiously recorded tapes to then-Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in exchange for immunity from prosecution for violating Maryland's law. Based on Tripp's tapes, Starr launched an investigation into the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship, looking for potential incidents of perjury in Clinton's testimony in the lawsuit Paula Jones had brought against Clinton.
While Tripp maintains she acted out of "patriotic duty," many 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 up to this time.
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 [3].
Arrest record controversy
On March 14, 1998, it was revealed that Linda Tripp was arrested in Greenwood Lake, New York in 1969 for allegedly stealing $263 in cash as well as a wristwatch worth about $600. The allegations were eventually dismissed. [4].
Although never convicted, Tripp answered "no" to the question "Have you ever been either charged or arrested for a crime?" on the Department of Defense employment application. Tripp sued the DoD for releasing her employment application in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974. On November 3, 2003, Tripp settled with the DoD for $595,000 [5].
George H. W. Bush affair controversy
Linda Tripp was involved in leaking information about an affair between former President George H. W. Bush (41) and a staffer named Jennifer Fitzgerald. This may explain why she was not rehired to her old White House position despite calls from many conservatives to Bush's son, President George W. Bush, to do so [6].
Life since the Lewinsky scandal
Since the Lewinsky scandal, Tripp has moved to Northern Virginia, had extensive plastic surgery, married German architect Dieter Rausch (a longtime sweetheart) in 2004, and opened with her new husband a year-round Christmas shop, called the Christmas Sleigh, in Middleburg, Virginia.
Tripp is breast cancer survivor.
