A Democrat senator has just admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is no longer mentally fit to serve.
Multiple Democratic lawmakers have now revealed they are worried that Feinstein is mentally unfit to fulfill her duties in the U.S. Senate.
“I have worked with her for a long time and long enough to know what she was like just a few years ago: always in command, always in charge, on top of the details, basically couldn’t resist a conversation where she was driving some bill or some idea,” one Democrat lawmaker said.
“All of that is gone.
“She was an intellectual and political force not that long ago, and that’s why my encounter with her was so jarring.
“Because there was just no trace of that.”
“It’s bad, and it’s getting worse,” the Democrat senator told the SF Chronicle.
This person said, according to the Chronicle, that Feinstein has difficulty keeping up with conversations and discussions within the Senate.
“There’s a joke on the Hill, we’ve got a great junior senator in Alex Padilla and an experienced staff in Feinstein’s office,” said a staffer for a California Democrat.
In a statement provided to The Chronicle on March 28, Feinstein said but declined to be interviewed:
“The last year has been extremely painful and distracting for me, flying back and forth to visit my dying husband who passed just a few weeks ago.
“But there’s no question I’m still serving and delivering for the people of California, and I’ll put my record up against anyone’s.”
“I’ve heard some of the same concerns,” Padilla said, “but as someone who sees her multiple times a week, including on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I can tell you she’s still doing the job and doing it well.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said:
“Senator Feinstein is a workhorse for the people of California and a respected leader among her colleagues in the Senate.
“She is constantly traveling between California and the Capitol, working relentlessly to ensure Californians’ needs are met and voices are heard.”
Pelosi added that it was “unconscionable that, just weeks after losing her beloved husband of more than four decades and after decades of outstanding leadership to our City and State, she is being subjected to these ridiculous attacks that are beneath the dignity in which she has led and the esteem in which she is held.”
“It shouldn’t end this way for her. She deserves better,” said a California Democratic member of Congress.
“Those who think that they are serving her or honoring her by sweeping all of this under the rug are doing her an enormous disservice.”
From The SF Chronicle:
The article said Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had to tell Feinstein more than once that she needed to give up the Judiciary Committee leadership post because she didn’t remember he had already told her.
A month prior, she repeated a question to a witness, word for word, in a hearing with seemingly no awareness of having done so, and she shocked colleagues at the end of the contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett by unexpectedly praising Republicans for having conducted a great process.
…Since then, the situation has seemingly worsened, the lawmakers and former aides who spoke to The Chronicle said.
Even those who consider themselves among Feinstein’s closest allies worry her health and memory struggles will rapidly deteriorate or cause public embarrassment.
She rarely engages with the public outside her official duties as a member of Senate committees, including the Senate Intelligence Committee, which handles sensitive national intelligence, nor does she do extended sit-down interviews with the media.
She does field questions from the press in the Senate hallways, but often responds by saying she doesn’t know enough to comment or gives nonspecific responses.
In one instance, the former staffer recalled, they wanted Feinstein to sign off on something that would have advanced an important investigation.
But Feinstein repeatedly said she could not understand why the investigative step was necessary, an explanation the staffer said they felt was a result of Feinstein not being able to follow the thread of the investigation.
“It’s really hard to have a micromanager who is not fully remembering everything that we’ve talked about,” the staffer said.
“My biggest concern is that it’s a real disservice to the people of California.”
