Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve, citing recent interactions
Tal Kopan, Joe Garofoli
April 14, 2022
One state and four federal lawmakers plus three former staffers revealed they are concerned California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (left) can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — When a California Democrat in Congress recently engaged in an extended conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, they prepared for a rigorous policy discussion like those they’d had with her many times over the last 15 years.
Instead, the lawmaker said, they had to reintroduce themselves to Feinstein multiple times during an interaction that lasted several hours.
Rather than delve into policy, Feinstein, 88, repeated the same small-talk questions, like asking the lawmaker what mattered to voters in their district, they said, with no apparent recognition the two had already had a similar conversation.
The episode was so unnerving that the lawmaker — who spoke to The Chronicle on condition they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic — began raising concerns with colleagues to see if some kind of intervention to persuade Feinstein to retire was possible. Feinstein’s term runs through the end of 2024. The conversation occurred several weeks before the death of her husband in February.
“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. All of that is gone,” the lawmaker said. “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.”
Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating. They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.
They said that the memory lapses do not appear to be constant and that some days she is nearly as sharp as she used to be. During the March confirmation hearing for soon-to-be-Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Feinstein appeared composed as she read pertinent questions, though she repeated comments to Jackson about the judge’s composure in the face of tough questioning. But some close to her said that on her most difficult days, she does not seem to fully recognize even longtime colleagues.
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Feinstein and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) hug at the close of the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett in October 2020.
Samuel Corum/Getty Images 2020
“It’s bad, and it’s getting worse,” said one Democratic senator. This person said that within the Senate, Feinstein has difficulty keeping up with conversations and discussions.
“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.
All of those who expressed concerns about Feinstein’s acuity said that doing so was painful because of their respect for the senator and her groundbreaking career. Each spoke on condition of anonymity, because they said they did not want to jeopardize their relationship with her and their mutual friends and colleagues.
They spoke to The Chronicle before Feinstein’s husband, financier Richard Blum, who had been in very ill health as he battled cancer, died. They said they were also sensitive to what Feinstein was going through.
The former staff members who spoke with The Chronicle requested anonymity in part out of respect to Feinstein and because of restrictions imposed by their current jobs.
The Chronicle agreed to protect each of these people’s anonymity, in accordance with the newspaper’s policy on confidential sources, due to the importance of Feinstein’s ability to govern.
In a statement provided to The Chronicle on March 28, Feinstein said she’s still performing her job well. She 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,” she said. “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.”
Other lawmakers defended Feinstein’s abilities in on-the-record interviews with The Chronicle, noting that she asks pertinent questions in committee hearings, votes as needed, and oversees an office that is still a strong player on legislation and constituent services.
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine volunteered that after a recent snowstorm caused a traffic backup that resulted in him being stuck in his car for 27 hours commuting to D.C., Feinstein handwrote him a letter expressing how sorry she was for what he had experienced.
Some of these people bristle at singling out Feinstein, when congressional history is filled with aging male politicians who remained in office despite their declining state.
Padilla has known Feinstein since the mid-1990s, when he worked for her briefly. “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.”
Several of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s colleagues say her memory lapses are inconsistent, and she appeared composed when questioning then-Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (left) during hearings in March.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a statement to The Chronicle, said she had not noticed a decline in Feinstein’s memory and noted her work on the recent reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and the Supreme Court confirmation.
“Senator Feinstein is a workhorse for the people of California and a respected leader among her colleagues in the Senate,” Pelosi said. “She is constantly traveling between California and the Capitol, working relentlessly to ensure Californians’ needs are met and voices are heard.”
Pelosi said 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.”
But the new details about Feinstein’s condition raise questions about where a line should be drawn in a legislative body with no age or term limits.
Other than resignation, death or the end of a term, there is only one way to remove senators from office: a two-thirds vote of their peers. The Senate has expelled 15 members since 1789 — one for treason and 14 for supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War. A handful of other expulsions have been explored, usually for corruption, but in each case the lawmaker left office before a vote.
Adding urgency to the recent concerns: If Democrats retain control of the Senate next year, Feinstein will succeed retiring Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy as the Senate’s president pro tem — putting her third in line for the presidency. Feinstein has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission that would allow her to run in 2024, a formality that lets her keep her fundraising accounts active, though she has not yet declared whether she intends to run.
Still, there’s a sense of resignation about the situation amid the sadness and frustration, The Chronicle found, as discussions about how to persuade Feinstein to step aside have yet to produce any results.
“It shouldn’t end this way for her. She deserves better,” said the 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.”
Concerns about Feinstein’s ability to hold her job have followed her for years and intensified in 2020 when a series of accounts circulated about her performance. The attention two years ago was focused around the possibility that she would become chair of the Judiciary Committee under President Biden.
She defended her abilities at the time. “I don’t feel my cognitive abilities have diminished,” she told the Los Angeles Times in December 2020. “Do I forget something sometimes? Quite possibly.”
She had been responding to a December 2020 New Yorker story that reported Feinstein was “seriously struggling” with memory loss. 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.
Tal Kopan, Joe Garofoli
April 14, 2022
One state and four federal lawmakers plus three former staffers revealed they are concerned California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (left) can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — When a California Democrat in Congress recently engaged in an extended conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, they prepared for a rigorous policy discussion like those they’d had with her many times over the last 15 years.
Instead, the lawmaker said, they had to reintroduce themselves to Feinstein multiple times during an interaction that lasted several hours.
Rather than delve into policy, Feinstein, 88, repeated the same small-talk questions, like asking the lawmaker what mattered to voters in their district, they said, with no apparent recognition the two had already had a similar conversation.
The episode was so unnerving that the lawmaker — who spoke to The Chronicle on condition they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic — began raising concerns with colleagues to see if some kind of intervention to persuade Feinstein to retire was possible. Feinstein’s term runs through the end of 2024. The conversation occurred several weeks before the death of her husband in February.
“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. All of that is gone,” the lawmaker said. “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.”
Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating. They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.
They said that the memory lapses do not appear to be constant and that some days she is nearly as sharp as she used to be. During the March confirmation hearing for soon-to-be-Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Feinstein appeared composed as she read pertinent questions, though she repeated comments to Jackson about the judge’s composure in the face of tough questioning. But some close to her said that on her most difficult days, she does not seem to fully recognize even longtime colleagues.
2
1of2
Feinstein and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) hug at the close of the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett in October 2020.
Samuel Corum/Getty Images 2020
“It’s bad, and it’s getting worse,” said one Democratic senator. This person said that within the Senate, Feinstein has difficulty keeping up with conversations and discussions.
“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.
All of those who expressed concerns about Feinstein’s acuity said that doing so was painful because of their respect for the senator and her groundbreaking career. Each spoke on condition of anonymity, because they said they did not want to jeopardize their relationship with her and their mutual friends and colleagues.
They spoke to The Chronicle before Feinstein’s husband, financier Richard Blum, who had been in very ill health as he battled cancer, died. They said they were also sensitive to what Feinstein was going through.
The former staff members who spoke with The Chronicle requested anonymity in part out of respect to Feinstein and because of restrictions imposed by their current jobs.
The Chronicle agreed to protect each of these people’s anonymity, in accordance with the newspaper’s policy on confidential sources, due to the importance of Feinstein’s ability to govern.
In a statement provided to The Chronicle on March 28, Feinstein said she’s still performing her job well. She 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,” she said. “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.”
Other lawmakers defended Feinstein’s abilities in on-the-record interviews with The Chronicle, noting that she asks pertinent questions in committee hearings, votes as needed, and oversees an office that is still a strong player on legislation and constituent services.
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine volunteered that after a recent snowstorm caused a traffic backup that resulted in him being stuck in his car for 27 hours commuting to D.C., Feinstein handwrote him a letter expressing how sorry she was for what he had experienced.
Some of these people bristle at singling out Feinstein, when congressional history is filled with aging male politicians who remained in office despite their declining state.
Padilla has known Feinstein since the mid-1990s, when he worked for her briefly. “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.”
Several of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s colleagues say her memory lapses are inconsistent, and she appeared composed when questioning then-Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (left) during hearings in March.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a statement to The Chronicle, said she had not noticed a decline in Feinstein’s memory and noted her work on the recent reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and the Supreme Court confirmation.
“Senator Feinstein is a workhorse for the people of California and a respected leader among her colleagues in the Senate,” Pelosi said. “She is constantly traveling between California and the Capitol, working relentlessly to ensure Californians’ needs are met and voices are heard.”
Pelosi said 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.”
But the new details about Feinstein’s condition raise questions about where a line should be drawn in a legislative body with no age or term limits.
Other than resignation, death or the end of a term, there is only one way to remove senators from office: a two-thirds vote of their peers. The Senate has expelled 15 members since 1789 — one for treason and 14 for supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War. A handful of other expulsions have been explored, usually for corruption, but in each case the lawmaker left office before a vote.
Adding urgency to the recent concerns: If Democrats retain control of the Senate next year, Feinstein will succeed retiring Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy as the Senate’s president pro tem — putting her third in line for the presidency. Feinstein has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission that would allow her to run in 2024, a formality that lets her keep her fundraising accounts active, though she has not yet declared whether she intends to run.
Still, there’s a sense of resignation about the situation amid the sadness and frustration, The Chronicle found, as discussions about how to persuade Feinstein to step aside have yet to produce any results.
“It shouldn’t end this way for her. She deserves better,” said the 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.”
Concerns about Feinstein’s ability to hold her job have followed her for years and intensified in 2020 when a series of accounts circulated about her performance. The attention two years ago was focused around the possibility that she would become chair of the Judiciary Committee under President Biden.
She defended her abilities at the time. “I don’t feel my cognitive abilities have diminished,” she told the Los Angeles Times in December 2020. “Do I forget something sometimes? Quite possibly.”
She had been responding to a December 2020 New Yorker story that reported Feinstein was “seriously struggling” with memory loss. 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.
it's time for the lot of these old b*stards to retire!!!
