Senate

Romney defends Joe Scarborough, staffer’s widower: ‘Enough already’

by Marty Johnson - 05/27/20 10:43 AM ET

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) came to the defense of former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) and the widower of a former Scarborough staffer after President Trump said without evidence again on Wednesday that the woman’s death was “a Cold Case” that would haunt the “Morning Joe” co-host.

The president’s feud with Scarborough and fellow “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski is well-documented, but Trump has recently pushed the conspiracy theory that Scarborough was involved in the death of Lori Klausutis, an aide who worked in his Florida office when Scarborough was a congressman.

Klausutis died in 2001 after an undiagnosed heart condition caused her to lose consciousness and hit her head on a desk. Her death was ruled an accident, and Scarborough was in Washington at the time.

Trump on Wednesday tweeted, “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!”

Romney, one of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics and the only Republican senator to vote to convict him in his impeachment trial, didn’t directly mention the president directly in his response:

I know Joe Scarborough. Joe is a friend of mine. I don’t know T.J. Klausutis. Joe can weather vile, baseless accusations but T.J.? His heart is breaking. Enough already.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) May 27, 2020

Timothy Klausutis, Lori’s widower, on Tuesday wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, asking him to remove previous tweets Trump had made about his deceased wife and Scarborough.

Twitter has apologized for the matter but says Trump’s unfounded claims will not be taken down.

Asked about the matter by reporter on Tuesday, Trump said that he saw the letter but countered that he believed Lori Klausutis’s family wanted to “get to the bottom” of her death.

“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 said Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, published an editorial Wednesday sharply criticizing Trump on the issue.

“Donald Trump sometimes traffics in conspiracy theories — recall his innuendo in 2016 about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination — but his latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him,” the board wrote.

“Mr. Trump always hits back at critics, and Mr. Scarborough has called the President mentally ill, among other things. But suggesting that the talk-show host is implicated in the woman’s death isn’t political hardball. It’s a smear,” it continued. “Mr. Trump rightly denounces the lies spread about him in the Steele dossier, yet here he is trafficking in the same sort of trash.”