Linda Tripp might not be the first person you think of for Bill Clinton's sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky. But Sarah Paulson and her fat suit have been front and center in the promos for Impeachment: American Crime Story. For FX's retelling, Linda Tripp in American Crime Story steers the story as the civil servant reveals intimate details about Lewinsky's relationship to President Clinton as a confidant turned whistleblower... or confidant turned Judas depending on your point of view.

Tripp began working in the White House during George H. W. Bush's administration. As The Washington Post reported in 1998, she stayed in the White House when Bill Clinton became president and served as the executive assistant to the White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum. But after Nussbaum resigned, the new counsel brought in his own executive assistant and her role was up in the air. In the summer of 1994, the White House directed the Pentagon to hire Tripp for a job in its public affairs office.

The reason for this switch wasn't clear, though there's speculation that it had to do with Tripp being around at the time that the deputy White House counsel, Vincent Foster, died by suicide. Although she received a $20,000 raise for her transfer to the Pentagon, American Crime Story supposes that Tripp would have rather stayed at the White House. (Per NPR, Impeachment is based on the book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President by Jeffrey Toobin... The New Yorker employee who was fired in 2020 for masturbating on Zoom.) It was at the Pentagon where Tripp befriended Lewinsky after the White House intern was reassigned there. Lewinsky would confide in Tripp about her affair with the president.