At the suggestion of Tripp, Lewinsky had never laundered the garment. She also gave Starr’s team physical evidence of her dalliances with Clinton: a blue dress with an incriminating stain containing the president’s DNA. That July, Lewinsky’s lawyers announced she’d been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony. Clinton refuted the allegations against him, famously stating at a press conference, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Monica Lewinsky’s Blue Dress The mainstream media picked up the story a few days later, and a national scandal erupted. The next day, the site revealed Lewinsky’s identity. On January 17, 1998, the Drudge Report, a conservative online news aggregator founded in 1995, published an item accusing the president of having a sexual relationship with a former White House intern. The Media Frenzy and Grand Jury Testimony When Clinton was deposed that January by Jones’ legal team, he claimed he’d never had sexual relations with Lewinsky.

Soon afterward, FBI agents fitted Tripp with a hidden microphone so she could tape her conversations with Lewinsky.Īdditionally, Starr expanded his investigation to include the president’s relationship with the former intern, and federal officials told Lewinsky if she didn’t cooperate with the investigation she’d be charged with perjury. Kenneth StarrĪround the same time, independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who’d been investigating Clinton and his wife Hillary’s involvement in a failed business venture called Whitewater, found out about Tripp’s recordings. In December 1997, Lewinsky was subpoenaed by Jones’ attorneys and, after the president allegedly suggested she be evasive, the former intern denied in a sworn affidavit that she’d had a sexual relationship with Clinton.

Through Goldberg’s connections, word of Tripp’s tapes made it to lawyers working on behalf of Paula Jones, a former government employee who’d filed a lawsuit against the president for alleged sexual misconduct in 1991 when he was governor of Arkansas. At Goldberg’s urging, Tripp secretly-and in violation of taping laws in Maryland where she lived-recorded hours of her phone conversations with Lewinsky. Tripp in turn shared the story with a literary agent she knew, Lucianne Goldberg, an anti-Clinton conservative. Linda Tripp and Paula JonesĪt the Pentagon, Lewinsky became friends with a coworker, Linda Tripp, in whom she confided details of her affair with the president. The president and Lewinsky had two more trysts, the last in spring 1997, and afterward remained in touch by phone. Lewinsky’s visits to the Oval Office drew notice from people in the administration, and in April 1996 a deputy chief of staff had her transferred to a job at the Pentagon. Later that month, she took a paying job in the Office of Legislative Affairs.Īccording to Lewinsky, in the months that followed she and Bill Clinton had seven more sexual liaisons in the White House. That November, when many White House staffers were furloughed during a federal government shutdown, Lewinsky and other interns (who were allowed to keep working since they weren’t on the payroll), were moved into the West Wing to answer phones and run errands.ĭuring this time, Lewinsky flirted with the president and the two had their first sexual encounter on the night of November 15 in the White House. In the summer of 1995, after graduating from Lewis and Clark College, she landed an unpaid internship in the White House chief of staff’s office, working out of the Old Executive Office Building.

Born in San Francisco in 1973, Monica Lewinsky was raised in a well-off family in the Los Angeles area.

Monica lewinsky susan boyle