Supporters of President Trump say they are eager for House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler to take the helm of impeachment proceedings this week, predicting he will harm the Democratic case against Trump.
Republicans close to and within the White House say the New York Democrat is vulnerable to claims of hypocrisy and is prone to lash out in an unbecoming manner. The inaugural Nadler-led impeachment hearing on Wednesday, they said, will feature law professors unlikely to reveal new facts about Trump pushing Ukraine to investigate Democrats.
“We’ve been anxiously awaiting the moment that Nadler takes over the impeachment inquiry,” said a Republican close to Trump. “After [House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam] Schiff, he’s the most incompetent and unlikable Democrat member. [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi was unhappy with Schiff’s performance. Wait until she sees Nadler in action.”
Nadler has clashed with Trump since the 1980s and ’90s, when Trump nicknamed a then-overweight Nadler “fat Jerry.” The men fought particularly over Trump’s efforts to develop land on the West Side of Manhattan along the Hudson River.
Republicans say Nadler’s liabilities were on display this year when he repeatedly referred to former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks as “Ms. Lewandowski” in a closed-door hearing, in what they consider a deliberate sexual smear against Hicks and Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager.
And Republicans are dusting off Nadler’s words during the 1998 Bill Clinton impeachment. He said at the time “an impeachment of a president is an undoing of a national election,” expressed concern about due process rights for Clinton, and opposed the release of material from Ken Starr’s report despite now calling for the release of redactions in Robert Mueller’s report.
“In Jerry Nadler, Democrats have done the impossible and managed to find an even more unlikable face for their impeachment hoax than Adam Schiff,” said a former White House official.
On Monday morning, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway alleged that low esteem for Nadler was the reason for Schiff handling the initial phase of interviewing witnesses. The Judiciary Committee historically has been in charge of impeachment.
“Nancy Pelosi was so afraid to let Jerry Nadler … take over the proceedings that she had to shove it over to Adam Schiff, who really beclowned himself in that entire process,” Conway said.
Conway said she doesn’t know the names of law professors testifying Wednesday. “I don’t know if they have [the list] in a lockbox or if Jerry Nadler is sitting on it,” she told reporters in the White House briefing room. The White House declined an invitation to send an attorney to the hearing.
Trump allies voiced optimism about the likely effect of a hearing with professors.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Judiciary Committee member from Florida, said Monday on a podcast with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and former Trump spokesman Jason Miller that he expects the panel to backfire.
“What they’re going to do Wednesday, I think, really plays directly into our hand,” Gaetz said. “They’re going to bring what I can only perceive to be a group of kind of pious, condescending law professor activist-admission types to talk down to the Congress and really talk down to the MAGA movement.”
A Nadler spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
