Nadler gets a big shove on impeach

Rep. Jerrold Nadler may have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on one side putting the brakes on impeaching President Trump, but he’s got voters on the other demanding it, billionaire activist Tom Steyer told the Daily News.

Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which would launch impeachment, has reportedly echoed behind closed doors the public calls of some of his members to push ahead already. But he has so far stood by Pelosi in public, including after a dramatic caucuswide meeting Wednesday in which the speaker persuaded her party to go slow.

Still, Steyer, who has spent some $200,000 in Nadler’s district to push impeachment, argued that launching an impeachment inquiry would put Nadler (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn) more in line with his voters, about 30,000 of whom have signed Steyer’s impeachment petition.

“If we polled his district, there’d be 90-plus percent of the people who voted for him who want him to be aggressive, and to start an impeachment inquiry,” Steyer (photo) told The News this week.

Pelosi, of California, and other Democratic leaders, including House Democratic Conference Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn, Queens) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), still favor the take-itslow approach. Pelosi has argued that impeachment is too divisive to pursue without broad, bipartisan support.

The only way to succeed, though, Steyer said, is to start, and get it on TV, since most people will never read the damning conclusions of the Mueller report.

“Far from dividing the country, the only way this will happen, the only way we will get bipartisanship, is by getting American citizens to see what happened, to be revolted by what’s happened and by this president, and then to pressure their representatives to do the right thing,” Steyer said. “It won’t happen until they get a chance to see the evidence on TV.”

Daniel Schwarz, a spokesman for Nadler, declined to say whether Nadler was privately pushing Pelosi to impeach. Asked if Steyer was correct in hoping that Nadler wants to start impeachment, Schwarz said only, “Jerry has spoken quite a lot on this subject.”