A group of medical experts who claim that President Trump’s mental health makes him dangerous and unfit for office is seeking to testify during House impeachment proceedings.
The group, comprising four psychiatrists, a clinical neuropsychologist, a neurologist, and an internist, are planning to announce their availability next week to members of Congress and the media. They’ll also be available to consult privately with members of Congress, with 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, or with members of Trump’s cabinet.
Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale School of Medicine psychiatrist, announced the group’s plans to the Washington Examiner on Friday.
“We think that hearing about mental health aspects in the context of the impeachment hearings is critical, partly because, for the past 2.5 years we have been very deeply concerned about mental instability of the president, and pretty much all that we have said has borne out to be true,” she said.
The idea of doctors presenting a mental health assessment of someone without personally examining them is controversial and against some medical association codes. Lee and others who agree with her stance stress, however, that their description of the president’s behavior, of his showing mental instability and dangerousness, shouldn’t be interpreted as issuing a diagnosis.
Lee and those prepared to testify say there is enough information from the president’s public appearances, tweets, interviews, and also from special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report, to make the determination that, as Lee put it, “the president lacks mental capacity to fulfill the duties of his office.”
“There is very little that a personal examination will add,” Lee said.
Lee led a group of experts this year to conduct a mental health analysis of Trump using the Mueller report. After asking the president to submit to a medical exam, and not hearing back, they concluded Trump does not have the sound mental capacity to function in his role as president and recommended Trump lose his war powers and access to nuclear weapons.
The psychiatrists who are making themselves available for consultation are Dr. James Merikangas, Dr. Jerrold Post, Dr. John Zinner, and Dr. Allen Dyer, all of whom teach at George Washington University. Sara Pascoe, a clinical neuropsychologist who is a former member of the National Academy of Medicine, is also part of the panel. Lee doesn’t yet have permission from the neurologist and internist to name them publicly.
The experts plan to share findings from the mental health analysis if called in to testify. Post, who spent two decades at the CIA and compiled psychological profiles of world leaders, also has a book coming out called Dangerous Charisma: The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers to use as part of the testimony. Dyer, who helped author the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule,” which says it’s unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion of public figures they haven’t personally examined, will help navigate ethical rules, Lee said.
“We don’t believe there is the need for any further evaluation, and we are making ourselves available for the impeachment hearing because we believe that mental health issues will become critical as pressures from the impeachment hearings mount,” Lee said. “In other words, the more successful the impeachment proceedings become, the more dangerous the psychological factors of the president will become.”
The group, which Lee is calling the “Independent Expert Panel for Presidential Fitness,” will be able to answer questions such as whether Trump is capable of protecting the United States, whether he is capable of keeping the country safe, and what precautions members of Congress should take for the nation’s safety.
They won’t be specifically recommending how to remove Trump’s powers.
“Those things are up to politicians to decide. That’s not our domain,” Lee said. “But our medical assessment is that those dangers need to be removed one way or another.”
Lee is editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book that presents the case that psychiatrists have a responsibility to warn the public when a president is dangerous and is president and co-founder of the World Mental Health Coalition, which works to educate the public and consults with public officials about leaders that show signs of “imminent or lasting danger.”
She is also the public face of a five-person group working on setting up a medical panel to evaluate the mental capacity of Trump and Democratic presidential candidates.
She said Friday that such a panel would likely need to be set up after Trump’s presidency, but that the group ready to testify to Congress for impeachment could also sign off on 2020 candidates’ fitness for duty. The group had decided to offer themselves up for consultation given the timing of the impeachment hearings and felt it was best to have medical providers come forward who had already expressed their concerns about Trump.
“We didn’t wish to put clinicians who are already fearful of their careers in the position of fearing for their careers even more and also not be able to give an objective assessment as a result,” Lee said.
