Linda Rose Tripp (née Carotenuto; November 24, 1949 – April 8, 2020) was an American civil servant who played a prominent role in the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal of 1998.

From 2002, Tripp and her husband, Dieter Rausch, owned and ran a year-round holiday store, The Christmas Sleigh, in Middleburg, Virginia.

She was the daughter of Albert Carotenuto, an Italian-American high school math and science teacher, and his wife, Inge Beckwith,[1] a German woman whom he had met while he was an American soldier stationed in Germany.

[8] Tripp became a close confidante of Monica Lewinsky, another former White House employee, while both were working in the Pentagon's public affairs office.

[3] Michael Isikoff from Newsweek reported that, in August 1997, Tripp said that she had encountered Kathleen Willey coming out of the Oval Office "disheveled" and that "her face red and her lipstick was off."

[10] Jones' lawsuit, initially filed in April 1994 through her attorneys Joseph Cammarata and Gilbert K. Davis, eventually resulted in the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Clinton v. Jones that held that sitting US presidents do not have immunity against civil lawsuits for acts done before they take office that are unrelated to the office.

[11][12] Tripp also informed Starr of the existence of a navy blue dress that Lewinsky owned that was soiled with Clinton's semen.

[16] Before the trial, the state court ruled that because of the immunity agreements that the independent counsel's office had entered with Tripp, Lewinsky, and others, a substantial amount of the evidence that the prosecution had intended to use was inadmissible.

[17] At a pre-trial hearing, the prosecution called Lewinsky as a witness to try to establish if her testimony against Tripp was untainted by the independent counsel's investigation.

The Department of Defense inspector general investigated the leaks and found that Bacon and Bernath had violated the Privacy Act of 1974.

The US Department of Defense inspector general concluded that both Bacon and Bernath should have known that the release of information from Tripp's security file was improper.

[3] The couple lived in Middleburg, Virginia, where they owned and operated a German winter-themed holiday store, called the Christmas Sleigh.

[10] Tripp was portrayed by Sarah Paulson in the television series Impeachment: American Crime Story, which premiered on September 7, 2021, on FX.