Within the 19 years since a defective coronary heart valve prompted Lori Klausutis to faint and fatally hit her head on a desk, her household has n
Within the 19 years since a defective coronary heart valve prompted Lori Klausutis to faint and fatally hit her head on a desk, her household has needed to emotionally climate swells of conspiracy theories positing that she was the sufferer of foul play, even homicide, regardless of all medical and police proof on the contrary.
First got here voices on the political left attempting to solid her demise as mysterious and tie it to her Republican boss, Consultant Joe Scarborough of Florida. Then got here a Senate candidate who rekindled the innuendo forward of the 2006 election to attempt to hold Mr. Scarborough out of a Republican main. Finally, the right-wing fringe took over, persistently returning to the incident to stir mistrust in Mr. Scarborough, now a liberal MSNBC character.
However not often has an American household, all non-public residents, needed to endure having their private ache weaponized by somebody with the unchecked bully pulpit of the president of america. Individuals near Ms. Klausutis’s widower, Timothy, and different kin say the household has been aching anew for Lori and feels harm that President Trump keeps tweeting about her to score political points.
Mr. Trump’s baseless insinuations that Mr. Scarborough was involved in Ms. Klausutis’s death and had an affair with her reflect a callous pattern in which the president attacks his critics by going after their families or even ordinary people unconnected to Mr. Trump’s grievance. They have become the collateral damage of a transactional president and his followers, whose online swarm lingers and continues to unsettle long after Mr. Trump has moved on to the next outrage.
Some of the people pulled into the spotlight against their will, like Ms. Klausutis’s family, declined to describe their difficult experience, reluctant to become a media focus and convinced that little will deter the conspiracy theorists.
“It was a pretty tough time for them right after it happened, and that’s really who my heart aches for every time it comes up,” Paul Lux, a friend of Ms. Klausutis’s from the Okaloosa County Young Republicans, said, referring to her death in 2001. “This is the second time in the last four or five years. I always get called.”
But it is his disregard for the pain of private citizens that is most striking about his latest conspiracy theory about Ms. Klausutis, as he claims that her family would want to know more about her death when all they want is for him to leave her memory alone.
Mr. Trump previously cited Ms. Klausutis’s death in 2017, calling it an “‘unsolved mystery’” in a tweet suggesting that Mr. Scarborough be fired. Ms. Klausutis’s demise is neither unsolved nor a thriller: Mr. Scarborough was in Washington when she died in his congressional workplace in Fort Walton Seaside, Fla. The police investigated, the health worker carried out an post-mortem, and her demise was dominated an accident.
However that has mattered little to the president. On Wednesday, he falsely referred to Ms. Klausutis’s demise as a “cold case” — even after Mr. Klausutis wrote a heart-wrenching letter to Twitter pleading that it take down Mr. Trump’s posts. Twitter mentioned the posts didn’t violate the platform’s phrases of service.
“The frequency, depth, ugliness, and promulgation of those horrifying lies ever will increase on the web,” wrote Mr. Klausutis, who nonetheless lives in the identical residence in Niceville, Fla., that he and his spouse purchased not lengthy earlier than her demise. “These conspiracy theorists, together with most lately the president of america, proceed to unfold their bile and misinformation in your platform disparaging the reminiscence of my spouse and our marriage.”
Initially, Mr. Khan said in an interview, he figured the furor against his family would subside and the news cycle would move on. But nearly four years later, he said, he still receives threatening letters, emails and phone calls. (The threats are a tiny fraction of the thousands of supportive messages the family has received, Mr. Khan added.)
“We have realized that this is a very calculated scheme, a very deliberate way of causing pain in others: ‘I will utter this, then I will go quiet and then I will let my followers take it from there,’” Mr. Khan said of Mr. Trump. “This is in his operating manual — this is not unintentional or in the heat of the moment.”
After a while, the family developed a system to open unaddressed envelopes with gloves after letting the letters sit for a few days. They have a longstanding relationship with local law enforcement, who routinely patrol near their home in Charlottesville, Va. For years, Mr. Khan, a lawyer, had an automated response on his email to remind the sender that a threat sent over email is a federal crime.
“It was emotionally draining and disturbing,” he said. “No human being can be constantly and constantly on guard.” Now, he added, he sees it playing out with the Klausutis family, as Mr. Trump’s attacks shake “an innocent family who grieves.”
The White House press office declined to comment for this article.
The impact of getting caught in the maelstrom of an interaction with Mr. Trump can last for years. That was the case for Myeshia Johnson, who complained about the president’s tone during a 2017 condolence call after her husband, Sgt. La David T. Johnson, was killed in Niger.
The complaint sparked a tweet from Mr. Trump questioning her account of the call and a combative news conference from John F. Kelly, the president’s chief of staff at the time. Representative Frederica S. Wilson, a Florida Democrat who remains friends with Ms. Johnson, said this week that Ms. Johnson’s pain from the incident lingers.
For weeks after the clash with Mr. Trump, Ms. Johnson received death threats and vitriolic comments on social media from supporters of Mr. Trump’s, many of them saying she did not deserve money raised by a GoFundMe page to support her three children. Ms. Johnson eventually took down her Facebook and Twitter accounts, Ms. Wilson said.
“That hurt her so badly,” Ms. Wilson said. “I don’t think people realize what really happens to people who are demonized on social media. It hurts. It broke her heart.”
The anguish is reminiscent to what Trump allies have caused for the family of Seth Rich, the former Democratic National Committee staff member whose 2016 murder was exploited by conspiracy theorists. Sean Hannity of Fox News, a champion and confidant of Mr. Trump’s, helped amplify the conspiracy theories tying Mr. Rich’s death to hacking of D.N.C. email accounts that ultimately aided the president’s 2016 campaign.
Left to fend for itself against a barrage of social media attention, the family was profoundly affected by the unfounded insinuations, veering moment to moment from grief to anxiety to fear, said Brad Bauman, a former family spokesman who is still in touch with them. Mr. Trump did not step in to tamp down the conspiracy theories.
“At the time that they were going through this, it felt like a revictimization,” Mr. Bauman said. “And it was almost as though they had lost Seth for a second time.”
The 2019 report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, confirmed that Mr. Rich had not been the source of the emails, published by WikiLeaks.
One of the defendants in Aaron Rich’s lawsuit is Matt Couch, a founder of a company named America First Media. His recent post about the Scarborough conspiracy theory was retweeted by Mr. Trump over the weekend, inflicting the Klausutis household renewed misery.
Different households aggrieved by Mr. Trump previously declined to remark, saying they’ve been traumatized sufficient and don’t care to relive their experiences.
“There’s an actual psychological, pit-in-your abdomen disappointment that comes with having the president assault your loved ones,” Mr. McCain’s daughter Meghan mentioned in a short interview. “Despite the fact that he does it as a result of it’s a distraction from no matter scandal he’s battling, it may be detrimental to your loved ones’s psychological well being.”
Mr. Trump’s days-long tirade in regards to the Scarborough conspiracy concept has drawn unusually sharp rebukes from the conservative news media, but few Republican politicians broke ranks to criticize the president. One of them was Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who posted a tweet on Wednesday about his friendship with Mr. Scarborough and the president’s impression on Mr. Klausutis.
“Joe can climate vile, baseless accusations however T.J.? His coronary heart is breaking. Sufficient already,” Mr. Romney wrote.
Three years in the past, Mr. Klausutis, an Air Drive researcher, opened up about his life to Bicycling journal, recounting how deeply he despaired after his spouse’s demise, retaining to himself and gaining an unhealthy quantity of weight. After 5 years, he purchased a mountain bike and located pleasure and camaraderie within the sport. He additionally misplaced 165 kilos.
“I went to grief counseling after my spouse died,” he instructed the journal. “They instructed me to discover a interest … to search out like-minded individuals who assist you.”
Mr. Lux, the good friend who knew Ms. Klausutis from the Younger Republicans, is now the Okaloosa County elections supervisor. Her life had an enduring impression on his: Ms. Klausutis was a fellow Catholic who inspired Mr. Lux to return to the church. He did, beginning along with her funeral.
Michael D. Shear contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy and Kitty Bennett contributed analysis.