New House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) tells CNN he has no plans to wait for Special Counsel Robert Mueller's findings before starting his own investigation into President Trump's administration and also is committed to using his authority to ensure Mueller's report sees the light of day.
Nadler told CNN that once the House Judiciary Committee receives Mueller's final report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that "we will make sure it is public."
However, "we are not going to wait for the Mueller report. There is plenty for the Judiciary Committee to look into right now," the New York congressman said in an interview Friday with CNN's John Berman on "New Day."
"Specifically the attempt to have a massive fraud on the American people in terms of rigging an American presidential election and undermining the integrity of the election," he said. "And we have to look into that, whether it's by hush payments or by collusion with Russians or by any other means."
Nadler says it is too soon to discuss impeachment.
"That's why it is important to protect the Mueller investigation and important to do our own inquiry," he told CNN Friday. "We have to get the facts. We will see where the facts lead. Maybe that will lead to impeachment. Maybe it won't. It is much too early."
He argued that impeachment should not be pursued "unless you believe that you have such great evidence of such terrible deeds that when that evidence is laid out to the American people, you will probably get an appreciable fraction of the voters who supported the president to agree that you had to do it."
"Impeachment can't be partisan," he added.
(...)
"We have to see what the Mueller report says," he reiterated. "That has to come to the Judiciary Committee so that we can relay to the American people and we can look into it. And we have to do our own investigations. There's a lot of smoke, how much fire has yet to be determined."