Widower of former Scarborough staffer asks Twitter chief to take down Trump tweets

The husband of a woman who died while working for former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) has asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to remove tweets posted by President Trump that suggest her death was a part of a conspiracy theory involving the MSNBC “Morning Joe” host.

Timothy Klausutis, in his letter to Dorsey, which was obtained by The New York Times, told the Twitter founder that his “wife deserves better.”

“The frequency, intensity, ugliness, and promulgation of these horrifying lies ever increases on the internet,” Klausutis said. “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.”

In response, Twitter has said that while it is sorry about the statements and the attention they are drawing, it would not be removing the tweets. It did say it was working on an effort to address similar issues that it hoped to introduce soon.

“We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Hill in a statement. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.”

Lori Klausutis died in 2001 after an abnormal heart rhythm caused her to lose consciousness and hit her head on a desk in Scarborough’s congressional office in Florida.

Her death was ruled an accident, but Trump has repeatedly tweeted about the incident to cast aspersions on Scarborough, with whom he has feuded since the end of the 2016 GOP presidential primary. Scarborough was in Washington at the time of the incident.

Twitter has struggled with managing misinformation and false claims in recent years and hasn’t made it a practice to check world leaders, even when they post misleading or false information.

Trump most recently raised the issue on Tuesday morning.

The opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough was not a Donald Trump original thought, this has been going on for years, long before I joined the chorus. In 2016 when Joe & his wacky future ex-wife, Mika, would endlessly interview me, I would always be thinking….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020

….about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing? Maybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020

In a Saturday tweet, Trump also mentioned the incident, calling Scarborough a “Nut Job.” Mika Brzezinski, Scarborough’s wife and co-host of “Morning Joe,” said last week that she was going to speak to Dorsey about Trump being banned from Twitter.