at 3:08 pm leave a comment 




the name peter kadzik probably doesn<u+2019>t ring a bell for many of you, although it probably should. this guy is a real piece of work, as an excellent article published earlier today at the daily caller demonstrates. 




here<u+2019>s some of what we learned: 




the day after hillary clinton testified in front of the house select committee on benghazi last october, john podesta, the democrat<u+2019>s campaign chairman, met for dinner with a small group of well-connected friends, including peter kadzik, a top official at the justice department. 




the dinner arrangement, revealed in hacked podesta emails released by wikileaks, is just the latest example of an apparent conflict of interest between the clinton campaign and the federal agency charged with investigating the former secretary of state<u+2019>s email practices. 




podesta and kadzik, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, were in frequent contact, other emails show. in one email from january, kadzik and podesta, who were classmates at georgetown law school in the 1970s, discussed plans to celebrate podesta<u+2019>s birthday. and in another sent last may, kadzik<u+2019>s son emailed podesta asking for a job on the clinton campaign. 




<u+201c>the political appointees in the obama administration, especially in the department of justice, appear to be very partisan in nature and i don<u+2019>t think had clean hands when it comes to the investigation of the private email server,<u+201d> says matthew whitaker, the executive director of the foundation for accountability and civic trust, a government watchdog group. 




kadzik, who started at the doj in 2013, helped spearhead the effort to nominate lynch, who was heavily criticized for her secret meeting with the former president. 




kadzik represented podesta during the monica lewinsky investigation. and in the waning days of the bill clinton administration, kadzik lobbied podesta on behalf of marc rich, the fugitive who bill clinton controversially pardoned on his last day in office. 




in a sept. 2008 email , which the washington free beacon flagged last week, podesta emailed an obama campaign official to recommend kadzik for a supportive role in the campaign. 




podesta, who would later head up the obama white house transition effort, wrote that kadzik was a <u+201c>fantastic lawyer<u+201d> who <u+201c>kept me out of jail.<u+201d> 




podesta made false statements to a grand jury impaneled by independent counsel kenneth starr for the investigation. but he defended the falsehoods, saying later that he was merely relaying false information from clinton that he did not know was inaccurate at the time. 




<u+201c>he did lie to me,<u+201d> podesta said about clinton in a national public radio interview in 1998. clinton was acquitted by the senate in feb. 1999 of perjury and obstruction of justice charges related to the lewinsky probe. 




kadzik, then a lawyer with the firm dickstein shapiro morin & oshinsky, represented podesta through the fiasco. 




podesta had been promoted to clinton<u+2019>s chief of staff when he and kadzik became embroiled in another scandal. 




kadzik was then representing marc rich, a billionaire financier who was wanted by the u.s. government for evading a $48 million tax bill. the fugitive, who was also implicated in illegal trading activity with nations that sponsored terrorism, had been living in switzerland for 17 years when he sought the pardon. 




to help rich, kadzik lobbied podesta heavily in the weeks before clinton left office on jan. 20, 2001. 




a house oversight committee report released in may 2002 stated that <u+201c>kadzik was recruited into marc rich<u+2019>s lobbying campaign because he was a long-time friend of white house chief of staff john podesta.<u+201d> 




the report noted that kadzik contacted podesta at least seven times regarding rich<u+2019>s pardon. 




on top of the all-hands-on-deck lobbying effort, rich<u+2019>s ex-wife, denise rich, had doled out more than $1 million to the clintons and other democrats prior to the pardon. she gave $100,000 to hillary clinton<u+2019>s new york senate campaign and another $450,000 to the clinton presidential library. 




the first mention of personal contact between podesta and kadzik in the wikileaks dump is in an oct. 23, 2015 email sent out by vincent roberti, a lobbyist who is close to podesta and his superlobbyist brother, tony podesta. in it, roberti refers to a dinner reservation at posto, a washington d.c. restaurant. 




the dinner was set for 7:30 that evening, just a day after clinton gave 11 hours of testimony to the benghazi committee. 




podesta and kadzik met several months later for dinner at podesta<u+2019>s home, another email shows . and in an email sent on may 5, 2015, kadzik<u+2019>s son asked podesta for a job on the clinton campaign. 




i<u+2019>ll have the lobster risotto with a side of cronyism and middle class destruction. 




as head of the office of legislative affairs, kadzik handles inquiries from congress on a variety of issues. in that role he was not in the direct chain of command on the clinton investigation. 




the justice department and fbi have insisted that career investigators oversaw the investigation, which concluded in july with no charges filed against clinton. 




but kadzik worked on other clinton email issues in his dealings with congress. 




last november, he denied a request from republican lawmakers to appoint a special counsel to lead the investigation. 




seems like a pretty important decision for a clinton crony to make. 




the justice department declined to comment on the record for this article. 




could the department of injustice have any less credibility? 




for more on the shameless and shady fbi <u+201c>investigation<u+201d> into hillary clinton, see:
meet peter kadzik <u+2013> another clinton stooge at the justice department
michael krieger