President Trump on Tuesday dismissed a letter written by the widower of an aide to former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) objecting to his tweets promoting a conspiracy theory about her death.
The president said he believed the deceased aide’s family wanted to “get to the bottom” of her death.
“I’m sure that, ultimately, they want to get to the bottom of it, and it’s a very serious situation,” Trump told reporters Tuesday after saying he had read the letter written by Lori Klausutis’s widower.
Timothy Klausutis asked Twitter to take down the president’s posts promoting “horrifying lies.”
Trump has in recent weeks tweeted repeatedly about an unsubstantiated theory that Scarborough, now a co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” was at fault in the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis, an aide who worked in his Florida office when he served in Congress.
Trump seemed unbothered by the widower’s complaints on Tuesday, continuing to suggest Scarborough may have been involved in Lori Klausutis’s death when asked why he was tweeting about a baseless theory. Trump said that “a lot of people” suggested Scarborough was responsible for her death and vaguely suggested the matter should be investigated.
“It’s a very suspicious thing, and I hope that somebody gets to the bottom of it. It would be a very good thing. As you know, there is no statute of limitations,” the president told reporters in the White House Rose Garden during an unrelated event.
Trump also alluded to a 2003 appearance by Scarborough on Don Imus’s radio program during which Imus told a joke about the death of an intern and Scarborough could be heard laughing, calling it “inappropriate.” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany referred to the same clip during an earlier briefing while defending the president’s tweets and deflecting questions about why he was promoting the theory.
Lori Klausutis, who had an undiagnosed heart condition, fell and hit her head at work in 2001 and was found dead the following morning. Scarborough was in Washington at the time, and the medical examiner ruled her death an accident.
Timothy Klausutis, in his letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, accused Trump of taking the memory of his deceased wife and “pervert[ing] it for perceived political gain.”
“The frequency, intensity, ugliness, and promulgation of these horrifying lies ever increases on the internet,” he wrote. “These conspiracy theorists, including most recently the President of the United States, continue to spread their bile and misinformation on your platform disparaging the memory of my wife and our marriage.”
Twitter on Tuesday said the company was “deeply sorry” for the pain caused by the tweets but declined to remove them from the platform.