Scarborough’s Twitter Snit Revives His Own 2001 Dead-Intern Scandal – Ignored by Media Then And Forgotten Until Now

Remember the scandal from the summer of 2001 about the congressman and the dead female staffer? No, not the Chandra Levy murder, the other one — the one involving Lori Klausutis, the young woman who was found dead in the district office of Joe Scarborough, then a Republican congressman from Florida, now MSNBC’s token right-wing host, the star of “Morning Joe,” an unwatchable live show that airs at the crack of dawn on the East Coast.

Klausutis’ death was largely ignored at the time and has been all but forgotten since, and it is in Scarborough’s interest to keep it that way. Unfortunately for him, however, the incident is back in the news, and Scarborough only has himself to blame.

It started when DailyKos founder, Markos Moulitsas, made a reference to the incident on Twitter. Scarborough could not let it pass and reacted negatively. Now the death of Lori Klausutis is back in the news.

More about the Moulitsas-Scarborough Twitter war below, but first, in case you’ve forgotten, here’s a recap of the two scandals from the summer of 2001.

On May 1, Chandra Levy, a 23-year-old intern, disappeared after apparently going out for a run. As the search for her wore on, it was revealed that she had been in a relationship with Gary Condit, a 53-year-old married Democratic congressman from California. He denied there had been a relationship at first, but was forced to admit the affair after an aunt in whom Chandra had confided came forward.

There was plenty of evidence that Condit, like so many espousers of “family values,” was a hound dog. That fact alone — there was no concrete connection between him and Levy’s disappearance — was enough to fuel the cable news channels’ “All Chandra, All the Time” wall-to-wall airing of speculation, rumor-mongering and innuendo about the case. Over the summer of 2001 — at the same time that Osama bin Laden was setting the attacks on Sept. 11 in motion — the Beltway media was obsessed with Chandra Levy’s disappearance as it had been in the 1900s with the OJ Simpson trial and the various Clinton non-scandals.

By comparison, news of the death of Lori Klausutis in July made barely a blip in the national news. Within hours after her body was found in Scarborough’s Fort Walton office, where Klausutis worked as a constituent services coordinator, the coroner ruled out foul play or suicide. A final report issued weeks later indicated that she’d suffered a hairline skull fracture probably as a result of hitting her head on the desk when she collapsed. The collapse itself may have been caused by a heart condition.

Unlike the Condit-Levy matter, there was no indication that Joe Scarborough, then 38, had had an affair with Lori Klausutis, who was 28. On the other hand, Scarborough had caused rather more than a blip in the news cycles a month earlier when he abruptly announced he was resigning from Congress. Why? To spend more time with his family, specifically his young sons.

At some point over the summer he must have divorced the boys’ mother because in October he married Susan Warren, a former aide to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and congressional staffer.

There were striking similarities in the Condit and Scarborough cases. Both involved congressmen who touted family values but were involved in adulterous romances. The victims were both young women who worked for Congress.

But there were also significant differences. Chandra Levy had vanished while apparently out for run. Her skeletal remains would be found in Rock Creek Park the following May, but her fate was a mystery in the summer of 2001. (In 2009, police arrested a suspect, an illegal alien from El Salvador, who they said jumped her as she jogged through the park.) With the Klausutis’ case, the fact that the cause of death remained something of a mystery never really caught the interest of the Beltway media — more likely than not because Scarborough is, you know, a Republican.

Conversely, Condit was hounded by political paparazzi. Every stone in his background was turned over and everything that was found there as dragged into the light. It went on and on, never to stop until a little after 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001.

Here’s Markos’ version of events:

In case you were wondering why you haven’t seen me on MSNBC recently, it seems that Joe Scarborough, he of the lowest rated morning show in cableland, has blackballed me. And Phil Griffin, the alleged president of MSNBC, is going along with it.

It all began May 29, with Joe Scarborough taking to Twitter to whine about the media coverage of the supposed Sestak scandal (remember that one?):

JoeNBC: The Sestak story is as unbelievable a cover story as Nixon throwing little Checkers under the bus. A farce on it’s face. Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1. The press will let this laughable story slide.

That was too much horseshit for me. If there was someone who had ZERO ground to stand on whining about media bias, it was Scarborough. So I shot back:

markos: Like story of a certain dead intern. RT @JoeNBC: Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1.

Markos: But if you want to talk about bullshit “scandals”, @JoeNBC, there’s this one about Joe Sestak and the White House you might’ve heard of.

It degenerated from there.

JoeNBC: @markos Unbelievable. You have a long history of spreading lies suggesting I am a murderer. This is the 3rd or 4th time by my count.

Markos: @JoeNBC, I’ve never suggested you’re a murderer. I’ve noted media hypocrisy in going after Gary Condit. But he was Dem. You aren’t.

JoeNBC: Anyone in media who interviews @markos, know that you’re extending your credibility to someone who regularly suggests that I’m a murderer.

Markos: A bit touchy, @JoeNBC? Links for where I accuse you of being a murderer please.

There were no links, Kos says, because he’d never accused Scarborough of murder, nor did he accuse him of murder in the Twitter exchange.

At that point Scarborough went ballistic. He went to his boss, Phil Griffin, and had Kos blackballed from appearing on MSNBC, where he was a frequent guest on “Countdown,” with Keith Olbermann.

Of course, Scarborough knows that his media buddies aren’t going revive the scandal they ignored in 2001, but by pushing back so hard he revealed that it is still a touchy subject for him.

If nothing else, this episode offers another illustration of the operative political principle of our era. The media is so sensitive to the Republicans’ charge that it has a liberal bias that reporters and pundits recoil from stories involving Republicans, like Joe Scarborough, even when they are eerily similar to non-stories, like the Condit scandal, that they have pursued with salacious tabloid-style abandon.

In other words, I.O.I.Y.A.R. It’s Okay If You’re a Republican.