Podesta Friend At DOJ Led Cover-Up Of IRS Scandal

Part of the swamp that needs draining:

Senior Department of Justice official Peter J. Kadzik, newly exposed by WikiLeaks as colluding with Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, is the same Obama appointee who helped cover up the Internal Revenue Service’s deliberate targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups. ...

[Lois] Lerner refused to testify at congressional hearings, instead invoking her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid possible self-incrimination. Congressional investigators found that the IRS targeted right-of-center 501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy groups during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. They determined that Lerner organized an unprecedented crackdown on Tea Party and conservative groups and then attempted to scapegoat those nonprofits, blaming them for the harsh treatment they received at her instigation. ...

At DOJ, Kadzik also put the kibosh a year ago on any possible criminal prosecution of Lois Lerner. ... Kadzik was dismissive. "Ineffective management is not a crime," he wrote. "The Department of Justice's exhaustive probe revealed no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution. What occurred is disquieting and may necessitate corrective action — but it does not warrant criminal prosecution."

Kadzik wrote there was no proof of bad intent on Lerner's part and that she seemed to try to correct the inappropriately tough scrutiny on conservative and Tea Party nonprofits once she "recognized that it was wrong." "In fact, Ms. Lerner was the first IRS official to recognize the magnitude of the problem and to take concerted steps to fix it," he wrote. ...

Kadzik is tied to the Democratic Party Establishment and is a donor to Democrat candidates. Using his private Gmail account, on May 19, 2015, Kadzik tipped off John Podesta, Hillary's campaign chairman and former White House chief of staff in Bill Clinton's administration, about an upcoming hearing, according to a WikiLeaks document dump. ...

Earlier this year, WikiLeaks published a Sept. 8, 2008 email from Podesta, then serving on the Obama transition team, to Cassandra Butts of the Obama campaign. Podesta boasted in it that Kadzik — who represented him when he was accused of procuring a job for Bill Clinton paramour Monica Lewinsky as a way to keep her quiet — was a "fantastic lawyer" who "kept me out of jail."