Marianne Williamson’s former staffers accused her of verbal abuse, claiming that she was prone to angry outbursts during her 2020 presidential campaign.
Twelve of her former staffers reportedly told Politico that Williamson — who was a self-help author and spiritual adviser before she threw her hat in the ring as a presidential candidate — was a very different person behind closed doors than she claimed to be.
Williamson just launched her second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on March 4.
“It would be foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage,” one former staffer told Politico, on condition of anonymity. “It was traumatic. And the experience, in the end, was terrifying.”
Multiple staffers confirmed to the outlet that the candidate’s outbursts were loud enough on several occasions to prompt welfare checks from hotel security, and at least three cited incidents in which Williamson allegedly threw her phone at staffers who had set her off. All of the staffers who were interviewed recalled seeing her yell at people until they cried.
Former Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH), Williamson’s 2020 New Hampshire state director, appeared to confirm the accounts made anonymously by other staffers, telling Politico, “Those reports of Ms. Williamson’s behavior are consistent with my observations, consistent with contemporaneous discussions I had about her conduct with staff members, and entirely consistent with my own personal experience with her behavior on multiple occasions.”
Williamson responded to the accusations in a statement, claiming that her former staffers were trying to curry favor with “the political establishment” by attacking her. “This Presidential Campaign expects concerted efforts to dismiss and denigrate us. But the amplification of outright lies should not occur.”
She did confirm one incident that several of the staffers had recalled — when she got angry during a campaign trip to South Carolina and reportedly pounded a car door so hard with her fist that she eventually had to go to urgent care. “A car door is not a person. I would never be physically hurtful to a person,” she said.
She also dismissed accounts of her yelling at staffers on occasion, adding, “I find it hard to believe that people in politics have never raised their voice before.”