John Podesta may be one of the most influential people you’ve never heard of. He has held high positions in three presidential administrations and created a nonprofit that influences legislation and policy. He also oversees the spending of hundreds of billions of your tax dollars.
Podesta is one of the major tentacles of the Left’s massive influence campaign in Washington, D.C., a behemoth I call the Woketopus. It’s the subject of my new book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”
The book explains how the Left’s dark money network props up a system of woke nonprofits — groups advocating climate alarmism, transgender orthodoxy, critical race theory and technocratic government — that staff and advise the federal government, especially in the Biden-Harris administration.
John Podesta’s brainchild, the Center for American Progress, upholds all four major issues and has been particularly active in pushing subsidies for wind and solar, even though fossil fuels and nuclear energy are far more reliable. While many on the Left claim that man-made climate change threatens to destroy our civilization, climate doom predictions have stubbornly refused to come true since the 1970s, and the Left’s purported solutions to this overexaggerated crisis make life harder for Americans and others around the world.
So, who exactly is John Podesta?
1: Background
Podesta grew up in Chicago and attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He met a young William Jefferson Clinton in 1970 when they both worked in Connecticut for Joseph Duffy, a U.S. Senate candidate. He received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976.
Podesta worked as a Justice Department lawyer and then brought his legal expertise to Democratic offices in Congress.
2: The Clintons
Podesta worked in the Clinton White House, rising to be deputy chief of staff in 1997. Podesta coordinated the White House’s responses to the Whitewater probe (which investigated Bill and Hillary Clinton’s real estate investments) and the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The House of Representatives impeached Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in the scandal, though the Senate acquitted him.
Hillary Clinton tapped Podesta to chair her 2016 presidential campaign.
Amid that campaign, WikiLeaks released a 2012 email in which a progressive activist suggested to Podesta that “there needs to be a Catholic Spring [like the Arab Spring], in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a Middle Ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church.”
Podesta responded, “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a movement like this. Likewise Catholics United.” Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good received funding from left-wing foundations like George Soros’ Open Society Institutes and the Tides Foundation, groups that also fund Podesta’s left-wing nonprofit, the Center for American Progress.
3: The Podesta Group
John Podesta and his brother Tony co-founded The Podesta Group in 1988, and its fortunes rose with John Podesta’s prominence. The firm developed close ties to the Democratic Party, raking in $29.3 million in 2010 and earning Tony Podesta the rank of third most influential lobbyist in 2007.
Amid then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into ties between then-President Donald Trump and Russia, Tony Podesta dissolved The Podesta Group. The Justice Department investigated Tony Podesta for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act connected to work he had done on behalf of a Ukrainian political party that supported Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prosecutors closed the investigation without bringing charges.
4: The Center for American Progress
John Podesta combined his connections, his lobbying experience, and his legal and policy background to create a left-wing juggernaut. He founded the Center for American Progress in 2003, which he envisioned as a Democratic alternative to conservative think tanks such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.
Politico has described CAP as “the most influential think tank of the Biden era.” CAP has fed more than sixty officials into the Biden administration and helped shape Biden’s legislative initiatives and executive actions. Neera Tanden, CAP’s president and CEO from 2011 to 2021, currently serves as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
While leading CAP, Podesta also joined corporate boards and consulted for left-leaning nonprofits. Between 2010 and 2014, he served on the board of the green energy company Joule Unlimited, which later collapsed.
CAP has long supported electric vehicles and urged the Biden administration to spend more on green technologies. It describes climate change as “the greatest challenge facing the United States — and the world — over the next decade and beyond.” It celebrated the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, two bills that directed billions of dollars to fund electric vehicle charging infrastructure. (Automakers have been moving away from EVs due to low consumer demand, and they have warned that the Biden-Harris administration’s vision for a quicker transition to EVs is not possible.)
CAP also condemned the increase in U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), a curious move because American LNG exports had helped European countries that would otherwise rely on Russian LNG. Billionaire donors pressured John Podesta on the issue, and President Biden announced a temporary pause of pending approvals of LNG exports in January. A judge struck down the pause in July, but the administration appealed that ruling.
5: Directing Billions of Dollars
In August 2022, President Biden signed a law the Democrats titled the “Inflation Reduction Act.” The Inflation Reduction Act arguably worsened inflation, cleared the way for the IRS to hire 87,000 agents, and earmarked $369 billion in climate spending.
Biden touted the law as “the largest climate investment in history.”
Who did Biden pick to determine where all this “climate investment” goes? None other than John Podesta.
This puts the radical activist with close ties to the infrastructure of the Left at the center of a massive federal enterprise where he can advance his agenda in the name of saving the Earth.
Tyler O’Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal and the author of two books: “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” and “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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