President Trump escalated his conspiracy theory claims that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough killed a former staffer who died in his congressional office nearly two decades ago.
Trump, who recently began speculating that Scarborough was involved in the death of Lori Klausutis, 28, and calling for the case to be reopened, took his push a step further on Wednesday in an interview with Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade. During the radio interview, the president alleged that the former GOP congressman “got away with murder.”
“That was my feeling, a very strong feeling, and I do feel it,” he added.
When asked later why he frequently takes shots at Scarborough, he answered, “I just do it. You know, people hit me, I hit back. I fight.”
The president has routinely brought the matter up on social media in recent weeks, which spurred Klausutis’s widower, Timothy, to write a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey urging him to remove the tweets.
“Her passing is the single most painful thing that I have ever had to deal with in my 52 years and continues to haunt her parents and sister,” he wrote. “There has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo, and conspiracy theories since the day she died.”
A Twitter spokesperson later apologized for the situation, but the platform did not take action on removing or labeling the posts. Facebook opted to leave up similar posts from Trump as well.
The president acknowledged that he had seen the letter last week and said, “I’m sure that, ultimately, they want to get to the bottom of it, and it’s a very serious situation.”
Despite Timothy Klausutis’s pleas for the president to stop his attacks, Trump tweeted shortly after saying he had read the letter, “Psycho Joe Scarborough is rattled, not only by his bad ratings but all of the things and facts that are coming out on the internet about opening a Cold Case. He knows what is happening!”
Lori Klausutis’s death was ruled accidental after the medical examiner concluded that she had an abnormal heart rhythm, which led to her losing consciousness in the office. As she fell, Klausutis hit her head on the desk, which contributed to her death.
