- In a Tuesday-afternoon event in the Rose Garden, President Donald Trump doubled down on promoting a false conspiracy theory that Joe Scarborough, a former US representative, was involved in the death of a former staffer in 2001.
- Timothy Klausutis, the husband of the staffer, Lori Klausutis, who died in 2001 at age 28, wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week asking him to remove Trump's tweets suggesting that Scarborough was involved and that law enforcement should investigate.
- Trump claimed that Timothy Klausutis wanted to "get to the bottom of it," though Klausutis in his letter expressed no desire for the matter to be further relitigated or investigated.
- A medical examiner determined that Lori Klausutis' death was an accident: She fainted as a result of an undiagnosed heart condition, falling and hitting her head on a desk in Scarborough's district office.
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In a Tuesday-afternoon press conference about expanding access to insulin for seniors with diabetes during the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump doubled down on promoting a false conspiracy theory that Joe Scarborough, a former US representative, was involved in the death of a former staffer — even as the staffer's husband begged Trump to stop.
For the past several weeks, Trump has resurfaced a debunked conspiracy theory that Scarborough, in his capacity as a representative from Florida, was involved in the death of Lori Klausutis, who was found dead in his office in 2001 at age 28.
A medical examiner determined that Klausutis fainted as a result of an undiagnosed heart condition, falling and hitting her head on a desk. The examiner found no evidence that anyone played a role in her death. Since the death was ruled an accident, no one has ever been charged, and there is no cold case, as Trump has claimed in several tweets. Scarborough, the cohost of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, is now an extremely vocal Trump critic.
On Tuesday morning, The New York Times published an op-ed article by the technology writer Kara Swisher about a letter that Klausutis' husband, Timothy Klausutis, wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week explaining that the "frequency, intensity, ugliness, and promulgation of these horrifying lies" had caused him and his family great distress and asking Dorsey to delete the tweets.
Twitter said it would not delete the tweets. A representative told Insider in a statement that they were "deeply sorry" for the pain Trump's tweets had caused Lori Klausutis' family members and were "working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward."
Trump and his representatives have doubled down and defended Trump's propagating the conspiracy theories in a Tuesday-morning tweet, a midafternoon briefing held by the White House press secretary, and the late-afternoon event in the Rose Garden.
In response to a question from the Reuters reporter Jeff Mason about the tweets, Trump said, without evidence, that "a lot of people suggest" that Scarborough was involved in Lori Klausutis' death.
"And hopefully, someday people are going to find out," Trump added. "It's certainly a very serious situation, very sad — very sad and very suspicious."
—Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 26, 2020
When the Associated Press reporter Jill Colvin followed up to ask whether Trump had seen the letter — and specifically how much pain Timothy Klausutis said Trump's tweets had caused the family — Trump said, "Yeah, I have, but I'm sure that ultimately they want to get to the bottom of it, and it's a very serious situation."
In his letter to Dorsey, Klausutis expressed no desire for law enforcement to further investigate or "get to the bottom" of his wife's death. He explicitly asked Trump to stop spreading conspiracy theories and Twitter not to give him a platform to do so.
"The President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain," he wrote.
Trump on Tuesday said he had seen a clip of an appearance Scarborough made on Don Imus' show in 2003 in which Imus joked about killing an intern.
"They were having a lot of fun at her expense, and I thought it was totally inappropriate," Trump said. "Now, it's a very suspicious thing, and I hope somebody gets to the bottom of it. It'll be a very good thing. As you know, there's no statute of limitations. So it would be a very good, very good thing to do."