It is becoming crystal clear that Tripp was long searching for incriminating evidence of whatever kind she could against the President. It's even clear that she tried to "plant" evidence, or embarrassing details, by suggesting to Lewinsky what she should ask the President (e.g. that Lewinsky should compare her age to Chelsea's in a conversation with the President -- which Tripp then knew she would record when Lewinsky reported back.
This is hardly the portrait of a woman who was a genuine friend, burdened by revelations of her friend's troubled affair, and only recorded it all to protect herself if she should have to admit that Lewinsky had discussed an affair. That cover story is patently absurd. (If that's all it was a single recording would surely have sufficed.
It is absolute apparent that Goldberg and Tripp actively plotted to bring the President down (and make a book fortune in the process). As I was saying several days ago, to the derision of many.
Excerpts from the LA Times story you posted:
When Tripp first approached Starr's staff on Jan. 12, she offered an alarming, incriminating picture of a conspiracy to obstruct justice, describing a President Clinton who allegedly told Monica S. Lewinsky to "deny, deny, deny," and a Vernon E. Jordan Jr. who purportedly counseled Lewinsky to lie under oath. Tripp's account led Starr's office to open a whole new inquiry into "subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice" related to Lewinsky's testimony in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton. At the time, Starr's team did not even mention simple perjury, which has become the prime focus of the case against Clinton.
***
But in the transcripts of Tripp's conversations with Lewinsky
released Friday, the evidence of obstructing justice is never quite as
crisp as Tripp initially claimed. In the tape-recordings of their telephone conversations, that arresting quote from Clinton--"deny, deny, deny"--never appears. And Lewinsky never describes Jordan, the president's friend, as
clearly urging her to commit perjury
More and more will be coming out about this.
Doug
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