Even Democrats Are Skeptical of Billionaire Tom Steyer’s Push to Impeach Trump

US environmental activist and Democrat Tom Steyer listens to a question during a Town Hall
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer is campaigning hard with his “Need to Impeach PAC,” but most of the Left is just not having it.

Though Tom Steyer maintains that the push “isn’t about me for one second,” he has yet to rule out his own bid in next year’s ever-more-packed Democratic primary race to face the incumbent POTUS. And even while most expect the Judiciary Committee to hold impeachment proceedings, there is reluctance to do so without hard evidence against President Donald Trump.

Steyer is reportedly attempting to leverage his immense wealth to push people in positions of power to begin the impeachment proceedings before the oft-theorized evidence surfaces, to the point of threatening the newly elected Democratic majority by sabotaging those who disagree — even if that means backing challengers to vital seats on the Left side of the aisle.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has characterized the billionaire’s efforts as a “waste of time and money” better spent challenging Republicans, rather than undermining his own party. “The fact is, you are by definition as an advocate dissatisfied, relentless and persistent,” she explained in a recent interview.

“Whatever the [elected officials] are doing is a compromise, it’s not the purity of what we want.” And while she claims to “understand” the frustration, she said, “they have to also understand that if you’re going to succeed on the path that you’re on, you have to do it right.”

“Tom Steyer was trying to impeach the president in November 2016 — I mean, let’s get a break here,” Georgia’s Republican representative — and the top Republican on the aforementioned Judiciary Committee — said. “It’s sad that you’re taking a chairman who has just taken over the committee for the first time in eight years, and you’re forcing him to do stuff that he knows is not practical at this point. I think it’s affecting a lot of our committee. It’s just sad.”

Despite the pressure, current Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler does not see Steyer as a legitimate challenger, and Democrat allies are rallying behind his “constitutional undertaking driven by facts and law,” rather than “liberal billionaires’ pet project,” as described by former chief counsel Julian Epstein, who was active during Clinton’s impeachment.

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