The husband of a woman who worked as a congressional aide for Joe Scarborough when he was in Congress begged Twitter to remove President Trump’s tweets that cast suspicion around her death.
Trump has called for an investigation into the death of 28-year-old Lori Klausutis, who was found dead in Scarborough’s district office in Okaloosa County, Florida, in July 2001. Klausutis, who was working for the then-GOP lawmaker, had an undiagnosed heart condition, which caused her to lose consciousness and fall and hit her head on a desk in the office.
Klausutis’s husband, Timothy, pleaded with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a letter sent last week to remove Trump’s tweets from the social media platform.
“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 said in the letter obtained by the New York Times. “There has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died.”
“The frequency, intensity, ugliness, and promulgation of these horrifying lies ever increases on the internet. 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,” he continued.
In tweets this month, Trump asked whether Scarborough “got away with murder” and claimed it was why the MSNBC host stepped down from Congress. Scarborough, who has vehemently denied any involvement in the woman’s death, announced his resignation from Congress months before she died.
“My request is simple,” the widower wrote to Dorsey. “Please delete these tweets.”
“The President’s tweet that suggests that Lori was murdered — without any evidence (and contrary to the official autopsy) — is a violation of Twitter’s community rules and terms of service. An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet but I am only asking that these tweets be removed,” he continued. “I am asking you to intervene in this instance because 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.”
“My wife deserves better,” he added.
