New Impeachment Inquiry Could ‘Contain’ Donald Trump’s ‘Pathology,’ Yale Psychiatrist Bandy Lee Suggests
One week after the United States Senate acquitted him in his impeachment trial, Donald Trump is already “emboldened” and seeking “revenge,” according to a CNN report on Wednesday. One of Trump’s first moves was to intervene in the sentencing of his longtime friend and political mentor Roger Stone, which drew criticism from some of the same Republican senators who voted for the president’s acquittal.
But a Yale psychiatrist, who has repeatedly warned about what she says is Trump’s mental illness, posted her recommendations for how to “contain” him following his impeachment acquittal. Dr. Bandy X. Lee took to her Twitter account to state that attempts to shape the president’s political behavior should not be “the goal.”
Instead, she offered several specific recommendations for “containment and management” of Trump’s “pathology.” The first of Lee’s recommendations — a new impeachment inquiry.
According to Lee, the new impeachment effort could focus on “war crimes, emoluments, and abuse of the judicial branch.”
Last month, Trump impeachment lawyer and retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz filed a “grievance” against Lee with Yale University, after Lee said that Dershowitz and Trump experienced “shared psychosis.” In response to his grievance, Lee called the president’s “mental pathology” a “public health emergency.”
Despite her focus on “pathology” rather than “politics,” Lee was not alone in calling for a second impeachment of Trump. In a op-ed essay published in The Washington Post on Monday, conservative lawyer and Trump critic George Conway — husband of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway — said a second impeachment may be necessary.
Conway wrote that Trump’s quick retaliation against impeachment witnesses Alexander Vindman and Gordon Sondland, firing both, “ought to be impeachable” — and if the pair had testified to a grand jury rather than to Congress, his revenge may even be considered criminal.
But impeachment was not the only method Lee suggested to contain the president. She also suggested “inquiry into the 25th Amendment EVEN IF it does not work,” referring to the provision of the Constitution that allows a president to be removed if he is physically or mentally incapable of carrying out the duties of his job.
Lee also suggested an investigation into “whether Donald Trump lied to Robert Mueller,” the former Russia investigation special counsel. She added that Trump is “literally directing us to look here” by stating on Twitter without evidence on Wednesday morning that Mueller “lied to Congress.”
The Yale psychiatrist cautioned that simply carrying out the investigations would not be enough to accomplish what she called the “containment” of Trump’s “pathology.” Unlike the recently completed impeachment investigation and trial, mental health professionals should be consulted in future investigations, Lee said.
