Linda Tripp

Linda Rose Tripp was an American civil servant who played a prominent role in the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal of 1998. Tripp's action in secretly recording Monica Lewinsky's confidential phone calls about her relationship with President Bill Clinton caused a sensation with their links to the earlier Clinton v. Jones lawsuit and with the disclosing of intimate details. Tripp claimed that her motives were purely patriotic, and she was able to avoid a wiretap charge in exchange for handing in the tapes. She then claimed that her firing from the Pentagon at the end of the Clinton administration was vindictive, while the administration called it standard procedure for a political appointee. From 2004, Tripp and her husband, Dieter Rausch, owned and ran a year-round holiday store called The Christmas Sleigh in Middleburg, Virginia.