Facebook does not plan to take down President Trump’s posts alleging that MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough was responsible for the 2001 death of one of his congressional aides.
Trump has frequently taken to social media in recent weeks to question whether Lori Klausutis, 28, died of natural causes, as the medical examiner determined, sparking calls for social media platforms to delete the unfounded allegations. Facebook told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that it will follow Twitter’s lead in not deleting or providing any additional label to Trump’s accusations.
“We do not remove political speech solely because people may find it offensive, as this content understandably is to the family of Lori Klausutis and others,” a spokesman for Facebook said in a statement. “Speech from candidates and heads of state is among the most scrutinized content on our platform, which helps ensure people are held accountable for their words.”
Mika Brzezinski, Scarborough’s wife and co-host on Morning Joe, has called on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to take action against the president for pushing the conspiracy.
In tweets this month, which are also posted on his Facebook page, Trump speculated that Scarborough “got away with murder” and claimed it was why the Florida lawmaker stepped down from Congress. Scarborough, who has denied any involvement in Klausutis’s death, announced his resignation from Congress months before she died.
Timothy Klausutis, her widower, also wrote a letter to Dorsey urging him to remove Trump’s tweets about his deceased wife, explaining that “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.”
On Wednesday, Trump acknowledged that he had seen the letter and said, “I’m sure that, ultimately, they want to get to the bottom of it, and it’s a very serious situation.”
Klausutis passed out while she was alone in Scarborough’s congressional office. As she fell, she hit her head on a desk and later died as a “result of an acute subdural hematoma” from the resulting head trauma. The medical examiners found no evidence of foul play.
