Wendy Williams could exit her court-appointed conservatorship within weeks, her lawyer says, following what he claims was a misdiagnosis. In a Nightline segment aired Tuesday, attorney Joe Tacopina said Dr. Samuel E. Gandy, a New York neurologist who specializes in Alzheimer's disease, had concluded 61-year-old Williams does not have frontotemporal dementia or aphasia, despite a 2023 diagnosis, per USA Today. Williams was instead suffering from alcohol-induced dementia in 2023, Tacopina claims. "She was an alcoholic, no question about it. Wendy was drunk almost 24 hours a day," he said. She needed help, but in the form of "alcohol rehabilitation," he said.
Given that Williams no longer drinks, she could leave the conservatorship "by year's end," Tacopina said, noting that as a leading authority, Gandy's opinion should carry significant weight. Williams' longtime friend Sunny Hostin told Nightline that the former talk show host recently "sounds like the same Wendy." Williams herself has claimed to have passed a competency exam. But these assessments conflict with those of Williams' current guardian, attorney Sabrina Morrissey. In legal filings last year, she described Williams as "cognitively impaired and permanently incapacitated."
In August, People reported Williams' dementia and aphasia diagnoses had been reaffirmed, though Tacopina claims not to have reviewed those findings. The debate comes as Williams' ex-husband, Kevin Hunter, is pressing a federal lawsuit that attacks the underlying guardianship as "improper" and overly broad. The complaint accuses Morrissey and Wells Fargo, which first sought the guardianship in 2022, of unlawfully restricting Williams' civil liberties and straying from accepted professional standards. Defendants are expected to respond to his amended complaint in January. For now, at least, Williams remains at an upscale assisted-living facility in New York.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
