Linda Tripp died this morning with her husband and daughter at her bedside. She was 70.
Tripp, whose taped conversations with Monica Lewinsky nearly brought down the Clinton presidency, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer less than a week ago when she took herself to hospital suffering from stomach pains.
Husband Dieter Rausch and their daughter Allison Foley were the only relatives allowed to be in Tripp’s room in the ICU due to coronavirus protocols.
There will be no funeral due to the pandemic but rather a private internment and a memorial service will be held at a later date
Tripp is survived by her husband, her daughter, and son Ryan.
“My mommy is leaving this earth. I don’t know myself if I can survive this heartache. Please pray for a painless process for the strongest woman I will ever know in my entire lifetime,” Allison Tripp Foley posted on Facebook late Tuesday.
Lewinsky, 46, acknowledged Tripp’s fate in her own social media message on Wednesday.
‘No matter the past, upon hearing that linda tripp is very seriously ill, i hope for her recovery,’ Lewinsky tweeted. ‘I can’t imagine how difficult this is for her family.’
In 1999, Lewinsky gave evidence against Tripp after details of their private conversations were revealed to the world.
Tripp had grown close to the then-intern at the White House and secretly recorded their conversations.
She eventually revealed that ‘the president has a girlfriend’ and used the recordings to back her up. She opened up on the condition of immunity.
But one recording handed to the media before she was granted immunity got her in hot water. Tripp faced charges for illegally recording Lewinski and providing the tape to Newsweek.
In court at the time Lewinsky spoke of how she felt betrayed and said: ‘I hate Linda Tripp.’
But in 2017 Tripp said she felt ‘compelled’ to act, though she knew it meant ‘shattering Monica’s dreams’, because she believes Bill Clinton, 71, is a ‘sexual predator,’ with an ‘addiction’.
At the risk of her friendship and reputation, Tripp had no regrets about blowing the whistle.
‘It was always about right and wrong, never left and right,’ Tripp said at a National Whistleblower Day event in a 2018. ‘It was about exposing perjury and the obstruction of justice,’ she continued. ‘It was never about politics.’
Tripp was a civil servant in the Pentagon when she became close to the then-22-year-old Lewinsky, who also worked in the public affairs office.
During their conversations, Lewinsky revealed that she had a physical relationship with Clinton when she was a White House intern, and Tripp began to secretly record their talks.
Tripp also encouraged Lewinsky to document her relationship with the president.
Tripp turned the tapes over to then-independent counsel Kenneth Starr in exchange for immunity from illegal wiretapping charges.
She also told Starr about a key piece of evidence — the semen-stained navy blue dress Lewinsky said she wore during a sex act.
Lewinsky had shown Tripp the dress and she encouraged her to keep it and not have it dry cleaned.