NEW YORK — Former White House staffer Linda Tripp, a pivotal figure in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, will make a rare public appearance at an event inside the U.S. Senate office building commemorating the impact of whistleblowers on American society.
The National Whistleblower Center, a nonprofit legal center that works on whistleblower cases, says it picked Tripp to keynote its event “in recognition of her trailblazing courage to blow the whistle on sexual harassment and other misconduct by the highest office holder in the land.” The event will take place July 30 at the Dirksen Senate Office Building and Tripp’s speech will also be streamed live on Facebook at about 1 p.m. ET.
Tripp documented evidence of Lewinsky’s phone calls about her relationship with Bill Clinton and submitted the evidence to independent counsel Kenneth Starr, leading to the public disclosure of the Lewinsky matter. In a previous interview with this reporter, she explained she did so because she believed her own life and Lewinsky’s were in danger, saying that Lewinsky was threatening Clinton with outing the relationship.
In a press release, the National Whistleblower Center documented an alleged campaign launched by the Clinton administration in an attempt to damage Tripp’s credibility:
The White House and Pentagon launched a preemptory strike aimed at destroying Tripp’s credibility by unlawfully releasing harmful, confidential information about her. They also leaked to news outlets information from Tripp’s personnel and security clearance records in order to discredit her, causing her to file a lawsuit under the Privacy Act.
The United States Department of Defense eventually conceded it violated Tripp’s Privacy Act rights and was forced to settled with Tripp, granting her more than $595,000.
Tripp had unique access to the Clintons because her office was directly adjacent to Hillary’s second floor West Wing office for the entire time she served in the Clinton White House from 1993 to the summer of 1994 with the exception of the first three months of the Clinton administration, when she sat just outside the Oval Office.
In our previous interview, Tripp explained the Lewinsky case followed “years of alarm at what I had seen in the Clinton White House, particularly Hillary and the different scandals, whether it was Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewater, Vince Foster.”
“All of the scandals that had come before and were so completely obliterated in the mind’s eye of the American people because of the way all of them were essentially discounted. So I watched a lying President and a lying First Lady present falsehoods to the American people.
“So my dismay predated the January 1998 period when the Monica Lewinsky scandal surfaced. To me it was very important that the American people see what I was seeing. My years with the Clintons were so disturbing on so many levels.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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