Linda Tripp (R) speaks to the press in front of th
Linda Tripp, the woman who taped her conversations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, exposing the infamous sex scandal that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, has reportedly died, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday. She was 70 years old.
Tripp had been seriously ill with pancreatic cancer after she was diagnosed last week when she took herself to the hospital for stomach pains. Her daughter, Allison Tripp Foley, wrote Tuesday that her mother was on her deathbed.
“My mommy is leaving this earth. I don’t know myself if I can survive this heartache,” Tripps' daughter, Allison Tripp Foley, wrote Tuesday. “Please pray for a painless process for the strongest woman I will ever know in my entire lifetime, Linda Rausch."
Foley wrote that she and her husband Dieter Rausch were at her 70-year-old mother's bedside.
Tripp was working as a civil servant at the Pentagon in 1998 when she shot to fame after taping conversations she had with Lewinsky about her affair with Clinton. Lewinsky told Tripp about her physical relationship when she was a White House intern. Tripp also encouraged the then 22-year-old Lewinsky to document her relationship with the president. She also revealed the existence of the infamous blue dress that Lewinsky said she was wearing while engaged with Clinton at the time.
"It was always about right and wrong, never left and right," Tripp once told the Washington Post in a 2018 interview. “It was about exposing perjury and the obstruction of justice,” she continued. “It was never about politics.”
Lewinsky, 46, wrote on Twitter that “no matter the past, upon hearing that linda tripp is very seriously ill, i hope for her recovery. i can’t imagine how difficult this is for her family."
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