Fetterman’s ex-chief of staff warned doctor of mental health concerns, report says

The former chief of staff to U.S. Sen. John Fetterman grew so concerned about the Pennsylvania Democrat’s behavior last year he wrote a detailed letter to Fetterman’s doctor, warning that the politician appeared to be experiencing significant mental health challenges that could pose serious risks to his well-being, according to a report.

In May 2024, Adam Jentleson wrote to David Williamson, the medical director of the traumatic brain injury and neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, who had overseen Fetterman’s well-publicized treatment for depression at the hospital. New York Magazine quoted the letter in an article on Friday.

“I think John is on a bad trajectory and I’m really worried about him,” Jentleson, the former chief of staff, wrote. “I’m worried that if John stays on his current trajectory he won’t be with us for much longer.”

Former aides still in touch with Fetterman’s dwindling inner circle say his behavior remains a source of concern, according to New York Magazine.

Staffers were advised not to ride with Fetterman behind the wheel, citing concerns over what they described as reckless driving.

Fetterman was speeding in June 2024 when he crashed into the back of another vehicle in Maryland, according to a police report obtained by TribLive.

The senator was westbound on Interstate 70 at 7:45 a.m. when he rear-ended a vehicle near the interchange with Interstate 68 near Hancock, Md., according to Maryland State Police.

Fetterman crashed his Chevy Traverse into the back of a 62-year-old Pennsylvania woman’s Impala. His wife, Gisele, who had been in the back seat, suffered a pulmonary contusion and spinal fractures, according to New York Magazine. Fetterman, calling from the side of the road, told a staffer he had fallen asleep while driving and gave the phone to a police officer, the magazine reported.

“It’s a miracle no one died,” the officer said, according to the magazine.

Jentleson’s email came with the subject line “concerns.” He said Fetterman ate fast food, several times a day, exhibited mood swings and questioned whether the senator was taking his medicine or getting his blood work done. “We often see the kind of warning signs we discussed,” Jentleson wrote in the email quoted by New York Magazine. “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.”

Fetterman told the New York Times that the magazine story was a hit piece.

He said in a statement to the Times that “my ACTUAL doctors and my family affirmed that I’m very well.”

Fetterman also pointed out that the magazine article’s author, Ben Terris, is close friends with Jentleson, who resigned last year as chief of staff, according to the Times.

Terris confirmed the friendship in his magazine piece.

Fetterman, a Democrat who lives in Braddock, where he served as mayor, suffered a stroke during his campaign for the Senate.

Israel

As the Gaza war continued after Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, Fetterman became an outspoken proponent of military action in Gaza and did not initially support talks of a ceasefire.

His public takes rankled staffers and his wife, according to the article by Terris.

In early November, just weeks after the attack, Gisele Fetterman arrived at her husband’s Senate office and, according to a staffer present, they got into an argument, the magazine reported.

“They are bombing refugee camps. How can you support this?” the staffer recalled Gisele Fetterman saying, according to the magazine.

“That’s all propaganda,” the senator said, according to the magazine.

Days later, Gisele Fetterman texted a different staffer, the magazine reported: “I am at breaking point and I can’t co-sign this any longer. I’d love some help in language to separate myself from this. Can anyone help me?”

“In the final weeks of 2023, a Senate physician called the office, according to a staffer, to say that he had seen Fetterman ‘acting bizarrely’ near the underground trolleys that shuttle people between the Capitol and nearby office buildings,” Terris wrote. “He had witnessed Fetterman, seemingly unaware of his surroundings, walk directly into a group of people, nearly bowling them over.”

In a statement to New York Magazine, Gisele Fetterman suggested Jentleson, the ex-chief of staff, was trying to harm her husband’s reputation, saying Jentleson told her “scary, untrue stories about John’s health.” She added, “I would talk to John’s doctors about what Adam was telling me and they would be confused. Those doctors would tell me that their concerns were not with John, but with Adam,” the magazine reported.

Mar-a-Lago visit

In January, the Fetterman couple visited President Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago and Gisele traveled with the senator to Israel last month to visit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“She wasn’t going to go, and they had fights about it,” a staffer told New York Magazine.

The senator stated that if she declined to attend, she would forfeit her right to criticize any actions he took as president,

“I told her to put up or shut up,’” the staffer recalled Fetterman saying, according to the magazine. “‘If she doesn’t go, I don’t want to hear about it.’”

Gisele Fetterman agreed to visit Trump in Mar-a-Lago.

The senator told Terris the meeting with Trump lasted 75 minutes and was productive.

“His faculties haven’t slipped at all,” Fetterman told Terris. “It’s not that I admire it — I acknowledge it, and if you don’t, you do it at your own peril politically.”