Trump's Controversial Tweets Will Remain On Twitter

Twitter's Jack Dorsey

Twitter’s policy carve-out for world leaders is facing another test with President Donald Trump’s latest tweets resurrecting baseless claims that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough should be investigated for the death of his former staffer.

Earlier this month, Trump tweeted questions about when an investigation would be opened into the “Cold Case” of “Psycho Joe Scarborough.”

According to CNBC,  the unfounded accusation refers to the death in 2001 of Lori Klausutis, who was working for Scarborough when he was a Republican congressman for Florida. At the time, the medical examiner concluded Klausutis, 28, had fainted due to an undiagnosed heart condition and hit her head on the way down, finding no evidence of foul play.

Scarborough was in Washington, D.C., when Klausutis died in his district office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

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

Trump’s tweets revived a baseless theory that Scarborough was allegedly involved in Klausutis’ death. On Thursday, her widower, Timothy Klausutis, wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey requesting the company delete Trump’s tweets referencing those claims.

Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it would take no action at this time on tweets from President Trump about the 2001 death of a former congressional staff member, after her widower asked the company to remove them for furthering false claims.

In a letter to Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey that was published by the New York Times, Timothy J. Klausutis asked that the company remove a tweet by the president “alluding to the repeatedly debunked falsehood that my wife was murdered by her boss, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough.”

A Twitter spokeswoman said the tweets would remain.

“We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” the spokeswoman said in a statement when asked about the president’s tweets on Scarborough, now an MSNBC television host with whom Trump has brawled.