Feinstein is on the mend after getting pacemaker
Senator is monitoring Sessions’ confirmation hearings and expected back soon, office says.
WASHINGTON — A day after having a pacemaker installed, Sen. Dianne Feinstein was recovering Wednesday at home, a spokesman said.
The California Democrat, 83, is the oldest member of the Senate and her party’s ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which on Tuesday held its first day of confirmation hearings on President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala).
Feinstein’s spokesman, Tom Mentzer, said the senator, who took part in Tuesday’s questioning of Sessions just hours before her surgery, would watch Wednesday’s hearing from home and planned to submit questions afterward. He could not say specifically when she might return to Capitol Hill, but said it would be soon.
A pacemaker is a small device normally implanted under the collarbone and connected to the heart by tiny wires to help the heart beat more regularly, according to the American Heart Assn.
In a statement, Feinstein’s office said the 90-minute, non-emergency procedure at George Washington University Hospital “went smoothly and she will return to a full schedule very soon.”
Feinstein made the decision to have the pacemaker installed out of “an abundance of caution,” the statement said.
Mentzer wouldn’t provide additional reasons for the procedure or details on the condition it was intended to fix.
There has been broad speculation about whether Feinstein will seek another six-year term when she is up for reelection in 2018, and the senator has been coy about her plans.
Feinstein signaled Tuesday that she and her Democratic colleagues are not going to go easy on Sessions.