Lucianne Goldberg, an 87-year-old literary agent, and Clinton impeachment figure passed away on Thursday.
NEW YORK Lucianne Goldberg, who was 87 years old and worked as a literary agent, has died. She was a key figure in the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton because of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Goldberg’s son, political commentator and author Jonah Goldberg wrote on Twitter on Thursday that his mother had died at home on Wednesday. He did not say what happened.
Longtime conservative activist Lucianne Goldberg, whose agency specialized in right-wing books, became well-known all over the country when she told her friend Linda Tripp to secretly record her conversations with Lewinsky, a former White House intern with whom Clinton had had a sexual relationship.
Kenneth Starr’s investigation of Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky was based in large part on the 20 hours of tapes Tripp made of her conversations with Lewinsky. The House of Representatives impeached Clinton on December 19, 1998, because he lied under oath and said he hadn’t had sex with Lewinsky. However, the Senate found him not guilty, and he stayed in office.
Goldberg has been against Clinton for a long time. He met Tripp while working on a proposal for a book about the death of Clinton aide Vince Foster, whose suicide led conservatives to believe in conspiracies. Goldberg told her friend that the recordings would be legal, even though they weren’t.
He then told her to break Lewinsky’s trust and give the tapes to Starr. Later, Goldberg said she was glad Clinton had been caught “doing something.”
Goldberg set up her literary agency to promote books others would have shunned. In an article written in the wake of the Lewinsky tapes, the New York Times called her “an agent who likes right-wing, tell-all attack books.”
Goldberg also wrote racy novels and worked as a ghostwriter for celebrities. Her earlier career included 1970 co-founding of a group called the Pussycat League that campaigned against feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment.
Goldberg was born Lucianne Steinberger in Boston. William Cummings was her first husband, but they got a divorce. Sidney Goldberg, who ran a newspaper, was her second husband. He died in 2005.
Her survivors include Jonah Goldberg. Another son, Joshua Goldberg, died in 2011.
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