Donald Trump attends a meeting at the UN in New York. REUTERS/Al Drago
Forensic psychiatrist Bandy Lee said Sunday that the judge in Donald Trump’s New York criminal case should have ordered a “hospital-level evaluation” of him before sentencing. She also said Trump still needs “hospital-level care.”
Lee, a longtime Trump critic, spoke in an interview with MeidasTouch host Anthony Davis on “The Weekend Show.”
Lee said a panel of psychiatrists gave Justice Juan Merchan a "dangerousness risk assessment" before sentencing. Merchan, of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, presided over the hush money trial where a jury convicted Trump in May 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
“The next thing to do was to order a hospital-level evaluation of him to assess the degree of dangerousness to decide on sentencing,” Lee said. “Or the justice could have just taken our recommendation of maximum sentencing because of his danger to the public.”
According to Lee, the panel scored Trump 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, where the cutoff is 30.
Merchan postponed sentencing several times, including after the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 2024 presidential immunity ruling and Trump’s election win. In January 2025, he gave Trump an unconditional discharge, with no jail time or fine. Lee called the final hearing “only a formality.”
On Sunday, she repeated that the president is “hospitalizable” and said the need is growing more urgent ahead of next week’s midterm elections, which she called “the most dangerous period in American history because a man with this fragile mental state is going to find himself on the losing end.”
Trump is “going to become more aggressive and more demanding,” she said, “partly probably because he’s feeling himself diminishing.” She cited reports he appeared confused walking into an empty field and what she called his growing “disinhibition.”
“Going back to the idea of hospitalization, he needs hospital-level care,” she said. “The more he gets what he asks for, the more his expectations will balloon, and in fact the more miserable he will become and more dangerous.”
Lee has not examined Trump. She said the assessment relied on public information and interviews with other people, because talking to a manipulative person directly “can lead you astray.” The American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule” says psychiatrists should not give professional opinions about public figures they have not examined. Lee has criticized the rule.
Lee edited the 2017 bestseller “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump."
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