Senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, cares “more about her dog” than black people, a former African-American staffer accused, while also confusing two black senators, offered a new book.
The upcoming tome from Ben Terris of the Washington Post The big break: gamblers, party animals and true believers trying to win in Washington as America loses its mind profiles an ex-Feinstein staffer who played whistleblower by literally blowing smoke.
Terris, in one excerpt published Thursday in Politicowrote about how in the days following her firing by Feinstein’s office – after expressing concern about her treatment of black people and her mental abilities – Jamarcus Purley protested by getting high on magic mushrooms and smoking a joint in her office and then post the video.
Purley, Terris wrote, had had enough.
While Purley’s boss wrote in his resignation letter that he was fired for repeatedly missing work and writing back to voters without the manager’s permission, the young black staffer said he was fired for telling “hard truths” about the California Democrat.
“It was clear to him that her mental faculties were declining and that she might be becoming senile,” Terris wrote.
Jamarcus Purley protested mistreatment after working for Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein in California for five years by sharing a video of himself after his firing getting high on mushrooms and smoking a joint in her office
Purley also thought the Senate Office should focus more on member services — things like locating misdirected distributions or helping with federal forms. During a pandemic, this was the kind of work Purley believed could save lives — especially lives in hard-up communities of color,” Terris wrote.
Purley had been ‘let go’ two weeks earlier on a staff call.
He talked about the colleagues who touched his hair while he sat at his desk, how the senator never learned his name or spoke to him despite five years of service to her, how the chief of staff seemed to operate like a shadow senator since he said the current one wasn’t mentally there anymore,’ Terris said.
Perhaps most memorable to those in attendance was his belief that the senator “cared more about her dog, Kirby, than black people,” Purley had expressed.
Purley’s complaints were met with silence. And then a shooting.
But for a short time he kept his staff badge.
And so, one evening in February 2022, Purley returned to Capitol Hill and to the Hart Senate Office Building.
He took a dose of psychedelic magic mushrooms and rolled up a joint.
He queued up his mom’s favorite song, the 1982 R&B jam “I Like It” by DeBarge. Purley leaned back in Feinstein’s chair and took a drag from his already lit joint. The horns sounded and his plan changed again: he no longer sat still, but danced,” Terris wrote.
Purley later posted the content to his Instagram account.
One of the things Purley had called attention to was his belief that 89-year-old Feinstein’s “mental faculties were declining.”
He believed that this gesture would work as a piece of protest art, grab people’s attention on a visceral level, make them ask questions — about what might lead someone to pull off such a stunt — which he then detail,” Terris said. said.
The move was picked up by the popular Dear White Staffers Instagram account and by journalist Pablo Manríqueznow with The New Republic, as well as a brief entry in Politico Playbook – but the story never reverberated in Washington the way it should have.
Terris wrote that it’s likely because Purley has rendered himself no service as a credible witness to a deteriorating senator.
“As sharp and thoughtful as Purley was, he could be beautiful out there,” Terris said. In early March, after being picked up by Dear White Staffers, he gave a series of incoherent interviews to podcasts in which he made unprovable claims that his boss was being controlled by military companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin who wanted to “keep her in.” the Senate to “continue their bogus war in Ukraine.”
But while doing his own account, Terris came across a similar story.
“About a year earlier, Feinstein had approached Senator Tim Scott, reached out and told him she had rooted for him and was so happy that he was serving in the Senate with her,” the Washington Post reporter wrote.
“It was clear to Scott and the staff that Feinstein had mistaken the South Carolinian for Raphael Warnock, the newly elected Democratic senator from Georgia,” he said.
Scott — who is now examining a 2024 White House bid — was courteous and played along.
“Thank you very much,” Scott said, according to the employee who tipped Terris off. “Your support means a lot.”
Feinstein’s office declined to comment to the author.
Purley — who went to Stanford for his bachelor’s degree, studied abroad at Oxford and earned a master’s degree from Harvard — left Washington for his hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, after his discharge from Washington.
When Terris told him what he had discovered about the 89-year-old lawmaker, the former aide “jumped out of his chair, put his hands on his head and crouched on the floor.”
“This is what I’m talking about!” cried Purley.