Tom Steyer Impeachment Crusade: Billionaire Bankrolls $10M Effort

California billionaire Tom Steyer hasn't made a secret of how much he loathes President Donald Trump — or that he thinks the president's policies will harm the environment and accelerate climate change, a pet cause, despite previous investments in fossil fuels that helped make him filthy rich. Steyer is spending some of that money — more than $10 million — to bankroll a media campaign calling for Trump's impeachment. In the campaign announced Friday, Steyer demanded that "elected officials take a stand" and referenced a former Republican Congress that began impeachment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton "for far less."

In the video ad and other materials, the former San Francisco hedge fund manager said "people in Congress and [Trump's] own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger who is mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons." The ad claims Trump has brought the country to "the brink of nuclear war," that he has obstructed justice, that he has taken money from foreign governments and that he has threatened to shut down some media organizations for stories that cast him in an unfavorable light.

"If that isn't a case for impeachment and removing a dangerous president," Steyer says in the video, "then what has our government become?"

At the end of the video, he directs viewers to his NeedToImpeach website and to a letter found here that says, among a laundry list of complaints: "Donald Trump is not fit for office. It is evident that there is zero reason to believe he can be a good president."

Here are five things to know about Steyer:

Steyer's net worth is $1.61 billion, according to Forbes magazine's most recent list of the 400 richest Americans. The Yale University graduate began his professional career at Morgan Stanley in 1979 and worked there for two years before enrolling in Stanford Business School. He worked for Goldman Sachs as an associate in the risk arbitrage division, later became a partner in the San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman and in January 1986 founded Farallon Capital. He ran the hedge fund for 26 years until 2012, when he sold his interests and shifted his focus to politics and environmental issues. He gave about $90 million to select Democratic candidates and climate change efforts in the 2016 election cycle.

Since he sold his interests in the hedge fund, Steyer has emerged as something of an environmental savior. Steyer and his super PAC, NextGen Climate Action Committee, have spent $170 million supporting policies and politicians that help the environment and advance renewable energy, and he's one of the most vocal opponents of the Keystone XL project, a proposed 36-inch crude oil pipeline that would carry oil from the Alberta, Canada, tar sands through Nebraska to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Trump brought both the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access Pipeline projects back from the dead through executive action just days into his presidency, reversing former President Barack Obama's energy and environmental decisions. That pro-fossil fuels position — along with the appointment of former Exxon chief Rex Tillerson as secretary of state — only strengthened Steyer's resolve. "I know there are five stages of grief, but my parents raised me to pull up my socks when times get tough," he told Wired in March. "So I really never had the luxury of feeling bad, because right after the election I felt like we needed to figure this thing out."

Steyer may be the most influential environmentalist in American politics, but that wasn't always the case. He can't unwind previous investments as easily as Trump cancelled Obama’s actions on the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines and the Clean Power Act. In the 15 years before Steyer cut his ties with Farallon Capital, the firm bankrolled coal-related projects from China to Indonesia that will create tens of millions of tons of carbon pollution for perhaps decades to come. The coal mining companies Farallon invested in will create more coal than is consumed annually by Great Britain, The New York Times reported. Steyer's portfolio has been clean as of 2014, according to the fact-checking website PolitiFact, which said that since leaving the investment group, it has divested Steyer's holdings in fossil fuels.

Steyer has entertained the idea of running for office. He considered running to replace U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer after the California Democrat announced she would retire when her term expired in 2017, but decided that as a private citizen, he would have greater influence to affect his top causes — justice in education and the economy, as well as the environment — according to a Los Angeles Times report. Then, as California gubernatorial primary began heating up, he was faced a similar decision, whether to join what could be a bloody fray with Democrats, or fight what he considers the Trump administration’s most egregious policies regarding the environment and immigration. But he hasn't ruled out running for president in 2020, The Atlantic reported.

Some of the political ads Steyer’s super PAC has financed are downright weird if not blatantly false, according to Politico. Ads in 2014 mocked at-the-time candidate and now-U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, for signing an anti-tax pledge the ad claimed would send jobs overseas. The ad, which featured a pair of gleeful executives chewing on cigars, was labeled false by PolitiFact. Also debunked were ads that accused Florida Gov. Rick Scott of benefitting from oil drilling in the Everglades. And, in one of the more bizarre takes, Steyer’s super PAC ran an anti-Keystone ad that depicted the CEO of TransCanada becoming covered with oil as he slides along the pipeline shouting “Yippee!”

Watch the Steyer ad calling for Trump's impeachment below:

See Also: Trump Calls Steyer 'Unhinged' And 'Wacky'

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Photo: Billionaire Tom Steyer looks on during a rally and press conference with San Francisco supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, the author of a resolution calling on U.S. Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings for U.S. president Donald Trump. Steyer has launched his own $10 million campaign calling on the impeachment of the president. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)