Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said a bombshell report detailing claims of his erratic behavior which has raised questions about his fitness to serve in the Senate is a “hit piece” from the left.
“It’s a one-source story, with a couple anonymous sources, hit piece from a very left publication. There’s really nothing more to say about it,” Fetterman told reporters Tuesday.
According to New York Magazine, former Fetterman chief of staff Adam Jentleson and former staffers described him as “almost impossible to work for.”
In a letter to Dr. David Williamson, Fetterman’s neuropsychiatrist at Walter Reed, Jentleson wrote that he was worried Fetterman was “on a bad trajectory.”
“John frequently exhibits the kind of alarming behavior you told us to look out for when he was discharged (and has continued to do so since we last talked in December),” Jentleson wrote.
Among the concerns raised by Jentleson in his letter was that Fetterman probably wasn’t taking his meds or properly following his recovery plan after he was discharged from Walter Reed in 2023 after checking himself in for treatment of clinical depression.
“We do not know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not,” Jentleson wrote to Williamson.
“We often see the kind of warning signs we discussed: conspiratorial thinking; megalomania (for example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around but his sources are just what he reads in the news — he declines most briefings and never reads memos); high highs and low lows; long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues; lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room, such as swearing up and down that he didn’t say something everyone heard him say a few minutes prior,” Jentleson continued.
But Fetterman told CNN any suggestion that he is not following his wellness regimen is a lie.
“There’s been conflict here. And I’m like, hey, ‘I believe X, Y and Z,’ and I’m not sure why, why people have chose to create these circumstances, but that’s where we’re at, and it’s just a hit piece,” he said.
Fetterman also accused Jentleson of holding a “weird grudge.”
“If you’re really concerned about someone, you could say, hey, let’s sit down. Can we talk? It’s not … like going to the media,” he said.
Jentleson told CNN he stands by the allegations and hopes Fetterman “gets the help he needs.”
