Clinton Whistleblower Linda Tripp Dies: A Look at the Woman Who Helped Changed Political History

Linda Tripp Rausch, the Pentagon worker who exposed recordings of Monica Lewinsky detailing her relationship with President Bill Clinton, died on Wednesday at age 70, but her impact on American political history will live on.

While Linda is best known for her role in the 1998 scandal, she created a new life for herself after she was dismissed from the Pentagon in 2001.

PEOPLE confirmed Linda’s death on Wednesday.

Joseph Murtha, an attorney who had previously worked with Linda, said, “sadly, Linda did pass away today,” though he could not provide more information.

“My mommy is leaving this earth. I don’t know myself if I can survive this heartache,” Linda’s daughter Allison Tripp Foley wrote in a since-deleted Facebook post, per the New York Post. “Please pray for a painless process for the strongest woman I will ever know in my entire lifetime.”

Here’s what to know about the whistleblower.

Involvement in the Lewinsky scandal 

Linda secretly recorded conversations with Lewinsky without the White House intern’s knowledge and went on to share those recordings with independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who was investigating Clinton.

Linda told ABC News in 2001 that she was “fascinated” with the scandal.

“I couldn’t believe — could he be that reckless?” she told the outlet. “Could he be that arrogantly reckless to philander with a child? I was reeling from the horror of it all.”

RELATED: Linda Tripp Dies at 70: Lightning Rod Exposed Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky Affair — Then Started Over Away from D.C.

“I think the country needed to know,” Linda told Larry King in 2003. “The arrogance — the reckless arrogance that was going on in the Oval Office.”

When King pressed her on the secret recordings of someone who considered her a friend, Linda said, “First of all, documenting the evidence was something that happened long after I knew Monica Lewinsky. And after she was informed repeatedly that I would not help President Clinton fix the court case.”

Relationship with Lewinsky

Linda has denied that she and Lewinsky were friends, despite the intimate details Lewinsky shared with her.

“It wasn’t a friendship,” Linda previously told Fox News. “I wasn’t her mother on any level her mother was absent.”

“I wish her well, but I feel sorry for her,” Linda told King in the 2003 interview.

When asked if she had anything to add during her testimony in front of a grand jury, Lewinsky said, “I’m really sorry for everything that’s happened. And I hate Linda Tripp,” according to the Washington Post.

RELATED: Monica Lewinsky Remembers the ‘Hero’ Who Went to Bat for Me

Upon hearing of Linda’s illness on Wednesday, Lewinsky shared well wishes for her former confidante.

“no matter the past, upon hearing that linda tripp is very seriously ill, i hope for her recovery,” Lewinsky shared on Twitter Wednesday. “i can’t imagine how difficult this is for her family.”

Life after politics

After her dismissal from the Pentagon on the last day of Clinton’s administration, Linda married Dieter Rausch in 2004, and the couple settled in Middleburg, Virginia, which is outside Washington, D.C.

Linda told Page Six in 2017 that life on her farm there was “paradise with complete autonomy and privacy.”

“And that’s how I like it,” she added to the outlet at the time.

Linda and her husband operated a Christmas store called the Christmas Sleigh.

Marriage

Linda divorced her first husband, Bruce Tripp, in 1991.

13 years later, she married Dieter, who she first met as a child while visiting Germany with her family, according to a Middleburg Life profile. The pair stayed in touch into adulthood, reuniting when Linda invited Dieter to visit her new home in Virginia in 2000.

After that visit, Dieter decided to move in with Linda, and the pair were married in 2004.