Statement from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on John Podesta
January 31, 2024

From Day One, President Biden defined the climate crisis as the existential threat of our time that required a global effort to put the world on a safer climate trajectory.  In his time as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, Secretary Kerry  — with characteristic passion, diplomatic acumen, and tireless focus — ensured that the United States not only rejoined that effort but once again led it.

President Biden’s appointment of John Podesta to continue to lead our global climate efforts demonstrates the President’s steadfast commitment to tackling the climate crisis – and reflects his belief that we have not a moment to lose.  John has played–and will continue to play—a lead role in restoring U.S. domestic leadership on climate, including leading the Administration’s implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, the single largest investment to tackle climate change in history. 

John is a key architect of turning President Biden’s bold vision – that tackling the climate crisis also represents the single biggest economic opportunity of our time – into a reality here at home.  These efforts have not only put the United States in a strong position to achieve our climate goals, but have also unleashed a clean manufacturing boom that has inspired a domestic and global resurgence in clean energy investment and good-paying jobs. 

As he assumes his new role, John will bring both a deep understanding – and a proven model – for how countries around the world can enhance their ambition while unlocking a new era of clean, inclusive, and resilient economic growth. 

John’s efforts and experience will be critical as countries around the world develop their next round of enhanced emissions targets, which are due early next year, as well as work to build out the global clean energy supply chains necessary for achieving our shared climate goals. <Source>

John Podesta: The Scandal Master Returns

Students of scandal took note last month when President Biden announced the appointment of one of the dirtiest figures in presidential politics as his clean energy czar. John Podesta, the White House said, would step in as “Senior Adviser to the President for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation,” overseeing the new Inflation Reduction Act’s “expansive” energy and climate provisions. Expansive it is. Podesta is now in charge of a $370 billion pot of federal cash and incentives approved under the new law. History suggests he will not be shy in deploying the federal funds to reward Democratic Party allies, punish opponents, and protect Joe Biden.

Protecting his president has always been John Podesta’s real job. As far back as the Bill Clinton presidency, Podesta ran the cover-up of the “Travel Office affair”—a failed attempt by Hillary Clinton to fire the staff of the White House Travel Office and replace them with Clinton cronies. This was serious business. The Travel Office staff were mid-level federal employees, not presidential appointees, and livelihoods were immediately cut off. Thanks to Mrs. Clinton, the director the Travel Office was indicted on embezzlement charges and left to twist in the wind for more than two years, until a jury swiftly acquitted him of all charges. A Podesta-led White House review of the affair “proved to be nothing more than a whitewash,” a later investigation concluded. Mrs. Clinton denied having anything to do with the firings but an independent counsel report on the Travel Office affair concluded she had provided “factually false” testimony in the case.

Podesta had demonstrated loyalty and was rewarded. He was promoted to deputy White House chief of staff, where he played important roles in the Whitewater scandal. A White House “task list” noted the “Podesta damage control effort” in Whitewater. In 1998, he was named chief of staff and helped manage the Clinton defense in the Monica Lewinsky debacle, impeachment, and a scandal over presidential pardons.

John Podesta prospered too. In 2003, with the Democrats out of the White House, he cemented his position as a leading party figure by founding the influential Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank that quickly became an incubator for progressive politics and personnel. He returned to the White House in 2014 as a counselor to Barack Obama for energy and environmental issues.

In 2016, he signed on as chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. When Wikileaks released over 20,000 Podesta emails obtained from hackers who had penetrated the Democratic National Committee mail system, Podesta was revealed as the central figure in a seamy web of media allies, political operatives, big money donors, Wall Street figures, and Clinton Foundation interests. With the Wikileaks email scandal, the Washington Post noted, “the Clintons’ longtime cleanup guy” was now “the source of the mess.”

Mrs. Clinton of course lost that election. But Podesta was soon back, this time playing a key role in “the Transition Integrity Project”—an effort to aid Joe Biden and disrupt the 2020 presidential election. “The figure at the heart of the Transition Integrity Project is John Podesta,” Judicial Watch reported in October 2020, a month before the election. TIP “is a collection of professional Democratic operatives and Republican ‘Never Trumpers,’” JW noted. “Organizers and leaders include Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks, Nils Gilman of the ‘independent’ Berggruen Institute in California,” and anti-Trump Republicans Michael Steele, David Frum, and Bill Kristol.” <Source>