Last night, I wrote about the infamous Marc Rich pardon — the subject this week of an FBI document release. This morning, Scott wrote about the connection between the Rich pardon and Peter Kadzik, the assistant attorney general who wrote to Congress the other day about the current investigation into the newly discovered Huma Abedin emails. The connection is direct: Kadzik was a lobbyist who pushed for the Rich pardon.
Scott also noted the close connection between Kadzik and Clinton operative John Podesta, who is now running Hillary’s campaign. In fact, a House Oversight Committee investigation found that Rich hired Kadzik because of his close relationship with Podesta, who was Clinton’s chief of staff at the time. The pair discussed the pardon at least seven times in late-2000 and early-2001.
Podesta and Kadzik have known each other since the early 1970s when they met at Georgetown Law School, and are close friends. Kadzik represented Podesta during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Kadzik’s son asked Podesta for a job on the Clinton campaign.
Most significantly for present purposes, Kadzik has provided inside information to Podesta (who, remember, is running Hillary’s campaign) about developments in the email scandal. WikiLeaks emails show that the pair have dined together multiple times since the investigation started. We don’t know what they discussed over dinner, but we know, via WikiLeaks, some of what they have communicated electronically.
Specifically, Chuck Ross reports that Kadzik gave Podesta a “heads up” (his term) about several developments in the Clinton email case last year. In a May 19, 2015 email, Kadzik informed Podesta:
There is a [House Judiciary Committee] oversight hearing today where the head of our Civil Division will testify. Likely to get questions on State Department emails. Another filing in the [Freedom of Information Act] case went in last night or will go in this am that indicates it will be awhile (2016) before the State Department posts the emails.
Podesta forwarded the email to other Clinton campaign officials, adding: “Additional chances for mischief.”
Mischief is a good description of what Kadzik and Podesta were (and may still be) up to.
Last week, Matthew Whitaker, the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, told the Daily Caller that relationships like Podesta’s and Kadzik’s exemplify “the kind of thing the American people are frustrated about.” He noted “the political appointees in the Obama administration, especially in the Department of Justice, appear to be very partisan in nature and I don’t think had clean hands when it comes to the investigation of the private email server.”
Whitaker concluded that “the politically powerful have insider access and have these kind of relationships that ultimately appear to always break to the benefit of Hillary Clinton.”
The “heads up” Kadzik gave his pal Podesta illustrates Whitaker’s point. So perhaps our reader is right to see the FBI’s release of documents about the Rich pardon as a statement of how career people view the mischief Kadzik and Podesta make.
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