The day after Hillary Clinton testified in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi last October, her campaign chairman,John Podesta, met for dinner with a small group of friends including Peter Kadzik, a top official at the US Justice Department (Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs).
The dinner was set for 7:30 that evening, just one day after Clinton gave 11 hours of testimony to the Benghazi Committee.
Podesta and Kadzik met several months later for dinner at Podesta’s home, another email shows.
Another email sent on May 5, 2015, shows Kadzik’s son asked Podesta for a job on the Clinton campaign.
The dinner arrangement is an example of a conflict of interest between the Clinton campaign and the federal agency charged with investigating Hillary.
Kadzik handles inquiries from Congress on a variety of issues.
He denied a request from Republican lawmakers to appoint a special counsel to lead Hillary's investigation during November 2015.
Hacked emails confirm Podesta and Kadzik were in frequent contact.
Kadzik’s son emailed Podesta asking for a job on the Clinton campaign.
Kadzik's started at the DOJ in 2013 and led the effort to nominate Loretta Lynch, who was later heavily criticized for her secret meeting with Bill Clinton just before the FBI's "Hillary Decision".
Kadzik had represented Podesta during the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
In a September 2008 Podesta emailed an Obama campaign official to recommend Kadzik for a supportive role in the campaign, climing that Kadzik was a “fantastic lawyer” who “kept me out of jail.”
As deputy chief of staff to Clinton in 1996, Podesta asked United Nations ambassador Bill Richardson to hire Monica Lewinsky.
Richardson's autobiography said he offered Lewinsky the position but that she declined it.
Podesta made false statements to Ken Starr's grand jury.
Kadzik, then a lawyer with Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky, represented Podesta through the fiasco.
Podesta had been promoted to Clinton’s chief of staff when he and Kadzik became mixed up in another scandal.
Kadzik represented Marc Rich, a billionaire financier wanted by the US government for evading a $48 million tax bill.
Rich was also implicated in illegal trading activity with nations that sponsored terrorism, and had been living in Switzerland for 17 years when he sought the pardon.
Kadzik lobbied Podesta heavily on behalf of Marc Rich, who Bill Clinton pardoned on his last day in office.
A House Oversight Committee report released in May 2002 stated: “Kadzik was recruited into Marc Rich’s lobbying campaign because he was a long-time friend of White House Chief of Staff John Podesta.”
The report noted Kadzik contacted Podesta at least seven times regarding Rich’s pardon.
On top of the lobbying effort, Rich’s ex-wife, Denise Rich, doled out more than $1 million to the Clintons and other Democrats prior to the pardon.
Denise Rich gave $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate campaign, and another $450,000 to the Clinton presidential library.
Kadzik’s first involvement in the Clinton email investigation 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 Kadzik angered Republican lawmakers in a classified briefing when he declined to say whether Clinton aides who received DOJ immunity were actually required to cooperate with congressional probes.
