U.S. President Donald Trump is rekindling one of his long-running conspiracy theories, that a Republican congressman turned television critic of his played a nefarious role in the death of a young woman in 2001.
Trump tweeted twice over the weekend about the death of aide Lori Klausutis in the Florida congressional office of Joe Scarborough shortly before Scarborough left Congress and later became an MSNBC television talk show host.
Scarborough often interviewed candidate Trump on his “Morning Joe” show as he ran for the presidency in 2016, but more recently, along with his wife and show co-host Mika Brzezinski, has become a thorn in Trump’s side as he faces a re-election contest in November.
Earlier in May, Trump tweeted, ““When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so.”
Then, on Saturday, Trump tweeted, “A blow to her head? Body found under his desk? Left Congress suddenly? Big topic of discussion in Florida...and, he’s a Nut Job (with bad ratings). Keep digging, use forensic geniuses!”
On Sunday morning, Trump added another tweet: “A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough. So a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair? What about the so-called investigator? Read story!”
Trump tweeted about the case at least as far back as 2017. But a coroner found no evidence of foul play, ruling that that the 28-year-old Klausutis died because of a heart problem, causing her to hit her head on her desk. Scarborough was in Washington at the time she died.
Trump has long traded in debunked conspiracy theories.
Perhaps his most discredited theory was that former U.S. President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. state of Hawaii and shouldn’t have been eligible to become the country’s leader, a claim Trump eventually acknowledged was wrong as he ran for the presidency in 2016.
Trump also claimed that he saw Muslims in a television report celebrating the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist jetliner attack on the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center by dancing on the rooftop of a building in neighboring New Jersey. No such television report has been found.
