The Democrat Who Could Lead Trump's Impeachment--Or Stand in Its Way

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

BROOKLYN—“Right now, I don’t want to talk about it,” Jerry Nadler told his curious, concerned constituent. “We don’t want to talk about it.”

The man positioned to lead the House of Representatives’ impeachment effort against President Trump next year was holding court on a suffocating early August afternoon outside a Walgreens in the Brooklyn half of his New York City congressional district. This was a “Congress on Your Corner” event, and the 71-year-old Nadler—dressed sensibly for the heat in a light-blue button-up shirt without the suit jacket—was answering questions from a gaggle of local residents on whatever topics happened to be on their minds.

It was Robin Bady, a 67-year-old neighborhood resident, who asked about impeachment: What were the chances, she wondered, that it could happen if Democrats won back the House majority this fall?

It’s a question likely on the minds of millions of Americans at the moment, and more than just about anyone else in the country, Nadler is the person to ask. After a quarter-century in Congress, the liberal stalwart is now the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee—the panel that would consider articles of impeachment—and if a blue wave does crest in November, he would become its chairman.

Nadler wasn’t dismissing Bady’s question—the fast-talking New Yorker will offer his two cents on pretty much any subject. But he was sharing the not-so-secret political strategy of the Democratic Party during the midterm campaign: Impeachment, though it looms over both Congress and the presidency, is a topic for others to discuss.

“It doesn’t serve the function of a Democratic House to talk about it,” Nadler said on that street corner in Brooklyn.

For nearly a year, the billionaire Tom Steyer and a small but growing group of progressive House Democrats have been making the case for impeaching Trump over a variety of alleged crimes and abuses of power, and Republicans are using the specter of a Democratic bid to oust the president as a way to spur Trump’s die-hard supporters to the polls. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll released late last month, nearly half of respondents (49 percent) said Congress should begin impeachment proceedings following the conviction of the president’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the guilty plea of his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who implicated Trump in the violation of federal campaign-finance laws.

Like so many New York politicians, Nadler has a long history with Trump. But unlike top Democrats like Chuck Schumer and the Clintons, the two were never chummy. In the 1980s and 1990s, he infuriated the real-estate developer by leading the opposition to the residential towers Trump built in Nadler’s district on the West Side of Manhattan. Nadler is as liberal as they come in Congress, and he has been unsparing in his criticism of Trump; “reckless, dangerous, and lawless” are among the pejoratives he’s used to describe the president.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-democrat-who-could-lead-trumps-impeachment-or-stand-in-its-way/arBBN7EkD?li=BBnb7Kz

[DFW]

1. I know Jerry personally

I won't put words in his mouth, but let's just remember that he was one of the ones on the buses of Democratic Congresspeople from Capitol Hill to the White House to stand will Bill Clinton as a show of solidarity and disgust at the use of impeachment as political punishment.

Consider also that he has a keen legal mind and knows perfectly well what the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors means to him, and that his opinion of Trump is, shall we say, on the negative side--heavily so, in fact.

Jerry won't shy away from impeachment just because the Senate looks like it might not convict. If he is chairman of the JC and finds the threshold has been reached, he'll go for it. Keep in mind also that he knows perfectly well when it is prudent to shut up and keep his best cards close to his chest. If I were Trump and Jerry were JC chairman, the less Jerry said, the more I'd worry.

In any case, whatever Jerry says, I'd believe him. He is straightforward. He takes his job very seriously, and does not play games. When he says nothing, watch out.