Just two months after conservative firebrand Andrew Breitbart died of a sudden heart attack, a Los Angeles coroner has died of suspicious circumstances.
Sources told the Los Angeles Times that Michael Cormier, 61, appears to have died of arsenic poisoning on April 20, the day the Los Angeles coroner’s office released their preliminary autopsy report on Mr Breitbart.
Conspiracy theorists and some of Mr Breitbart’s fans say that the timing, as well as the manner in which Mr Cormier died, makes compelling evidence of a sinister connection between the two men’s deaths.
Emergency responders found Mr Cormier unresponsive at his North Hollywood home last week, according to ABC.
They rushed him to St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank where he was pronounced dead, having been perfectly healthy only days before, according to KTLA.
‘At this point we haven’t ruled out foul play,’ Lieutenant Alan Hamilton of the Los Angeles Police Department said to the Los Angeles Times. ‘It is one of the things being considered. We are waiting for the coroner’s results.’
The sources that disclosed the possible presence of arsenic said that finding the poison does not mean the death was a homicide, because it could have accidentally entered his system.
But the writers of InfoWars.com were quick to make the connection between Mr Breitbart’s death and Mr Cormier’s.
‘According to early reports, Michael Cormier was “seemingly healthy,” yet “suddenly stricken” with a fatal condition – just like Andrew Breitbart,’ one InfoWars journalist wrote in an article titled ‘Trail of Death: Breitbart Coroner Turns Up Dead, Arsenic Poisoning Suspected.’
Theories: Alex Jones’ website InfoWars.com, which also believed President Obama orchestrated Mr Breitbart’s death, believes Mr Cormier’s death is the latest in the ‘Trail of Death’
Mr Breitbart died suddenly on March 1, just before he was slated to release ‘damning’ footage of President Obama.
According to the coroner’s report published on the day Mr Cormier died, a negligible amount of alcohol was found in Mr Breitbart’s system but there was no evidence of prescription or illicit drugs.
The provocateur, who was instrumental in taking down New York Congressman Anthony Weiner and the ACORN child sex trafficking scandal, died before he was able to release a video of Barack Obama hugging controversial race theorist and Harvard professor Derrick Bell.
School Daze: Mr Breitbart died before he was able to release this ‘explosive’ footage of a young Barack Obama hugging controversial theorist Derrick Bell
‘This election we’re going to vet him, from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008,’ Mr Breitbart said of the video, which he claimed was ‘hidden,’ but was later revealed to have been published in full on PBS as well as YouTube.
The timing of Mr Breitbart’s death and the existence of the video caused dozens of conspiracy theorists to claim that President Obama was somehow linked to his death.
While theories about Mr Breitbart will probably never die, the theories about Mr Cormier’s death can quickly be debunked by the fact that Mr Cormier did not conduct the autopsy on Mr Breitbart.
The L.A. County Coroner’s Assistant Chief Ed Winter told LA Weekly that ‘only doctors’ ever worked on Mr Breitbart, because foul play was not suspected from the beginning.