A $1 million ad campaign funded by billionaire Tom Steyer is urging Democratic leaders to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
“This is a message for leaders of the Democratic Party. For over two years, this president has broken the law, and nothing happened,” the ad, released Thursday by Steyer’s Need to Impeach organization, states.
The spot is expected to run on national cable networks in Iowa and New Hampshire. Steyer’s communications director, Aleigha Cavalier, told HuffPost those states “are driving the political conversation right now.”
Steyer, a hedge fund manager and one of the largest individual donors to Democratic Party causes, said in January he would not be running for president in 2020. Instead, the billionaire has focused his political energy on turning out the Democratic base, as well as continuing his calls for impeaching Trump.
“Every day, the leadership of the Democratic Party admonishes Donald Trump’s pattern of reckless lawbreaking and corruption. But when pressed about what they plan to do about it, they fail to act,” Steyer said in a statement along with the ad’s release.
He continued by saying Congress “is broken” and that repairing it will begin with “holding Donald Trump accountable.”
Along with Thursday’s ad release, Steyer tweeted that the Need to Impeach campaign had delivered a petition with 36,000 signatures from constituents to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office urging her to begin impeachment hearings.
Pelosi has shown reluctance to pursue impeachment, arguing in a Washington Post interview in March that Trump is “just not worth it” and that the action could prove to be dangerously divisive in the nation.
After the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Pelosi said Trump had clearly “engaged in highly unethical and unscrupulous behavior” and indicated she wasn’t ruling out impeachment as a means of “finding the truth.”
Democrats have unsuccessfully subpoenaed the Trump administration for documents relating to the report. Pelosi on Thursday said the requested information would help Democrats determine whether to move forward with impeachment.
Several Democratic 2020 candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D), have voiced their support for impeachment proceedings.