Now that the FBI has finally gotten the needed warrants to search Weiner’s computer for Huma’s 650,000+ emails, the US Justice Department announced it is also joining the probe and promises to have over half a million Hillary emails handled “quickly”. The kicker? Podesta’s best friend, Attorney General Peter Kadzik will be doing the investigating.
A quick refresher on Kadzik, he represented Podesta during the Monica Lewinsky investigation and lobbied Podesta on behalf of Marc Rich, the fugitive who Bill Clinton controversially pardoned on his last day in office. Podesta even went on to say that Kadzik was a “fantastic lawyer” who “kept me out of jail.”
Wow, does anyone else see the problem here?! How is this even allowed?!
Zero Hedge had this to say:
https://twitter.com/AP/status/793184986832769025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In the letter to Congress, the DOJ writes that it “will continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible,” assistant attorney General Peter J. Kadzik writes in letters to House and Senate lawmakers.
#BREAKING Senior DOJ official sends letter to lawmakers responding to request for more information about email review.#8days pic.twitter.com/PCgT2ODkQd
— Just the Facts (@JTF_News) October 31, 2016
So far so good, even if one wonders just how active the DOJ will be in a case that has shown an unprecedented schism between the politically influenced Department of Justice and the FBI.
And yet, something felt odd about this.
Kadzik… Kadzik… where have we heard that name?
Oh yes. Recall our post from last week, “Clinton Campaign Chair Had Dinner With Top DOJ Official One Day After Hillary’s Benghazi Hearing” in which we reported that John Podesta had dinner with one of the highest ranked DOJ officials the very day after Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony?
It was Peter Kadzik.
In other words, the best friend of John Podesta, Clinton’s Campaign char, at the DOJ will be in charge of a probe that could potentially sink Hillary Clinton.
Podesta and Kadzik met several months later for dinner at Podesta’s home, another email shows. Another email sent on May 5, 2015, Kadzik’s son asked Podesta for a job on the Clinton campaign.
As the Daily Caller noted, the dinner arrangement “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’s email practices.” As one former U.S. Attorney tells told the DC, the exchanges are another example of the Clinton campaign’s “cozy relationship” with the Obama Justice Department.
The hacked emails confirm that Podesta and Kadzik were in frequent contact. In one email from January, Kadzik and Podesta, who were classmates at Georgetown Law School in the 1970s, discussed plans to celebrate Podesta’s birthday. And in another sent last May, Kadzik’s son emailed Podesta asking for a job on the Clinton campaign.
“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,” says Matthew Whitaker, the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a government watchdog group.
“It’s the kind of thing the American people are frustrated about is 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,” he added, comparing the Podesta-Kadzik meetings to the revelation that Attorney General Loretta Lynch met in private with Bill Clinton at the airport in Phoenix days before the FBI and DOJ investigating Hillary Clinton.
Kadzik’s role at the DOJ, where he started in 2013, is particularly notable Kadzik, as helped spearhead the effort to nominate Lynch, who was heavily criticized for her secret meeting with the former president.
It gets better because, as we further revealed, if there is one person in the DOJ who is John Podesta’s, and thus the Clinton Foundation’s inside man, it is Peter Kadjik.
Kadzik’s current role
In his current role 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.
In a Feb. 1, 2016 letter in response to Kadzik, Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis noted that Kadzik had explained “that special counsel may be appointed at the discretion of the Attorney General when an investigation or prosecution by the Department of Justice would create a potential conflict of interest.”
DeSantis, a Republican, suggested that Lynch’s appointment by Bill Clinton in 1999 as U.S. Attorney in New York may be considered a conflict of interest. He also asserted that Obama’s political appointees — a list which includes Kadzik — “are being asked to impartially execute their respective duties as Department of Justice officials that may involve an investigation into the activities of the forerunner for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.”
It is unknown if Kadzik responded to DeSantis’ questions.
Kadzik’s first involvement in the Clinton email brouhaha came in a Sept. 24, 2015 response letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley in which he declined to confirm or deny whether the DOJ was investigating Clinton. Last month, Politico reported that Kadzik angered Republican lawmakers when, in a classified briefing, he declined to say whether Clinton aides who received DOJ immunity were required to cooperate with congressional probes.
Kadzik also testified at a House Oversight Committee hearing last month on the issue of classifications and redactions in the FBI’s files of the Clinton email investigation.
Finally, it is also worth noting that Kadzik’s wife, Amy Weiss, currently at Weiss Public Affairs worked on the 1992 Clinton/Gore Campaign as a Press Secretary, and Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee, and a White House Deputy Assistant to the President/Deputy Press Secretary to President Bill Clinton.
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And now it seems that Kadzik will be in charge of the DOJ’s “probe” into Huma Abedin’s emails. Which is why we are a little skeptical the DOJ will find “anything” of note.
