Last week, Tony Podesta, an eminence in the annals of Washington lobbying, threw one of his signature events, a big birthday bash at his stately stone manse in Kalorama. His guests thought he was on top of his world, one of the men who makes the city go.
On Monday, hours after the first indictments in the investigation into ties between President Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, Podesta abruptly quit his post atop the Podesta Group, the capital’s eighth-wealthiest lobbying firm.
.. raised questions about the work Podesta’s firm did with Manafort to buff the image of the Ukrainian government.
.. “It is impossible to run a public affairs firm while you are under attack by Fox News and the right wing media,”
.. For decades, Tony and John Podesta — brothers who share a Jesuit education, a devotion to liberal causes and a passion for politics — have been central players in Washington. And in the past year, both have been drawn into the orbit of scandals.
.. Tony’s Podesta Group is one of two firms described in Monday’s indictment as having been recruited by Manafort and Gates to lobby on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych
.. Both the Podesta Group and the other firm, Mercury Public Affairs, have said they were hired to lobby for a European nonprofit based in Brussels trying to polish Ukraine’s image in the West. But behind the scenes, prosecutors allege, the real client was a political party led by the former Ukraine president, who was friendly with Russia.
.. To their opponents, the Podestas are quintessential swamp rats, exemplars of the permanent Washington establishment. Their defenders, however, view them as the oil that makes the gears of government turn.
.. Tony Podesta has been a pivotal figure in the murky connections between policy and politics, becoming wealthy on fees from industries and foreign entities that want something from Congress and the White House. He also bundles big donations and dispenses them to politicians who might someday be helpful to those lobbying clients.
.. the Podesta Group, representing some of the country’s biggest and most powerful businesses, including Walmart, Bank of America and BP.
.. This year, the firm’s top clients are Mylan, a pharmaceutical company; Wells Fargo; Crawford Group, the parent of Enterprise car rentals; and Lockheed Martin
.. Along the way, the firm also represented a number of foreign entities, including the government of Egypt under ex-dictator Hosni Mubarak.
.. “More and more, foreign countries turn to lobbyists to do work that diplomats once did themselves,”
Mueller Drains the Swamp
The Manafort charges are an indictment of a Washington that disgusts Americans.
Tony Podesta resigned so that he could address his firm’s involvement with Mr. Manafort’s firm while lobbying on behalf of then-Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych on, for example, “the propriety of imprisoning” his presidential rival. Yanukovych lives in exile in Russia now.
.. Robert Mueller is opening a drain on the Swamp.
.. That Tony Podesta would jump off the Swamp luxury liner called the Podesta Group suggests the seriousness of the threat Mr. Mueller could pose to the Washington economy.
Any conceivable legal exposure of Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Mike Flynn, almost certainly is about possible violations while engaged in lobbying work, rather than the standard collusion narrative.
.. When all this is over, President Trump will be seen as one of the greatest political naïfs to come down the Beltway pike in a long time.
.. The largely unheralded Trump effort to reduce regulation—in energy, the environment, land use, education, finance, telecommunications—won’t kill the Swamp but should shrink it.