The criminal investigation of Clinton in the Lewinsky matter began in January 1998. Former White House employee Linda Tripp, a friend of Lewinsky, turned over to Starr secretly taped phone calls in which the ex-intern confided her relationship with Clinton. The tapes contradicted Clinton's sworn testimony in the Jones case, which the president gave just days after Tripp had turned the tapes over to Starr.
The sequence -- first turning over the tapes, then Clinton testifying in the Jones case -- led Clinton and his defenders to accuse Starr's office of setting a perjury trap for the president.
Starr's prosecutors and the FBI looked into whether Clinton had tried to silence Lewinsky by getting presidential friend Vernon Jordan to find a job for her. Besides opening doors for her job-hunting efforts, Jordan arranged to hire a Washington lawyer for Lewinsky so that she could file an affidavit in the Jones case. In the affidavit, she denied having had a sexual relationship with Clinton.
When Lewinsky eventually agreed to cooperate with investigators in the summer of 1998, she turned over a stained blue dress from an encounter with Clinton, making it impossible for the president to deny a sexual relationship. Lab tests showed Clinton's DNA on the garment.
Let's see, when someone asks you a question under oath, don't lie. Whew, just missed that perjury trap. LOL