[CNN] One of Washington's most prominent lobbying firms is on the verge of shuttering after becoming ensnared by special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
Kimberley Fritts, the chief executive of the Podesta Group, told employees during a Thursday staff meeting that the firm would cease to exist at the end of the year, according to two sources. Employees were asked to clear out their desks and were told they may not be paid beyond November 15, multiple sources said.
Fritts told the employees the Podesta Group may try to provide health care through the end of the year, according to two people in the meeting.
How much trouble is Tony Podesta in?
The developments come after the Podesta Group was tied last week to Mueller's indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, who pleaded not guilty "Wudn't me." after being charged with failing to file as foreign agents relating to a decade of work they did for the Party of Regions, a pro-Russia political party in the Ukraine.
Mueller's special investigation team has also interviewed multiple people from the Podesta Group, which was recruited by Manafort and Gates to work along with another firm.
Talk of potentially closing the Podesta Group marks a dramatic downfall of one of K Street's most iconic and well-connected firms. In its heyday, Podesta Group was the largest non-law firm lobbying organization in Washington. Tony Podesta, the firm's founder and chairman, helped fuel the company with work for foreign governments. He and his brother, John, founded the company almost three decades ago. (John Podesta chaired Perennial Presidential Campaigner Hillary Crooked Hillary Clinton ... former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away... 's 2016 presidential campaign. He left the firm in 1993.)
A Podesta Group spokesperson declined to comment for this story. Fritts could not be reached for comment Friday via her Podesta Group email.
Mueller is looking into whether the Podesta Group properly identified to federal authorities its foreign advocacy for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, according to people familiar with the investigation. The ECFMU is a Brussels-based non-profit group that federal prosecutors have called a mouthpiece for pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/13/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
Podesta is a name you just don't play with.
/channeling the late great Jonathan Winters
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/13/2017 1:11 Comments ||
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#2
Funny Mueller, that corrupt, phony "lawman" is not imbridled in this corruption himself.
#3
they'll just change their name. Same client list, Same dirty Dem money
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/13/2017 7:38 Comments ||
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When will we see the indictments? Retorical question.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/13/2017 12:19 Comments ||
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#5
"He didn't say he was retiring. He didn't say he was resigning" last week, someone familiar with the firm said. "He's a prideful person. He built a very influential company over 30 years, and I think he believes he hasn't done anything wrong."
On Thursday, Podesta told staffers he had no plans to take up golf or tennis, and he may take on a couple of clients, according to a person familiar with his remarks.
Pride goes before the fall but until then, he's seriously dangerous.
#7
I would not be surprised if the dems consider these sort of firms as expendable. As long as the evidence is destroyed that is, they can create a new firm to do the same thing before Christmas.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., thanked civil rights hustler Al Sharpton ...Tawana Brawley's spiritual advisor... for helping her community "heal" after he spoke at prayer service Friday with the family of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of four U.S. soldiers killed during an ambush in Niger last month.
Sharpton, who is the president of National Action Network, delivered the keynote address and touched on the infamous phone call between Johnson's widow, Myeshia Johnson, and President Trump, which Wilson listened in on and described Trump as being insensitive ‐ a claim backed up by Myeshia Johnson but disputed by the White House.
"To act like she did something wrong, to stand up for a soldier killed in the line of duty ... I can't understand how we can even rationalize that," Sharpton told the congregation gathered at a church in Miami. He also spoke about the threats Wilson has received ever since her public feud with Trump began.
"Did you think that you could come after Frederica Wilson and we wouldn't stand there and say, 'we will give in,'" he said to cheers.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/13/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
If y'all pick at an imagined wounds long enough, eventually they will turn raw and begin to bleed. Then y'all can have scabs to play with for all eternity.
#2
Carrie Underwood sniped at trump then found put her husband was a cheat got really hammered and bust her wrist in a "pique of Rage".
I wonder what the "curse of Trump(PBUH)" has for Frederica Wilson.
[NYPOST] Foreign tourism to New York City is set to rise 3.6 percent this year ‐ defying yet another of the many doomsday predictions about Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s presidency.
Back in February, the city tourism agency said Trump’s "travel ban and related rhetoric" would mean a drop of 300,000 visitors this year. But the NYC & Co. prophecy proved false.
Of course, other predictions were more dire ‐ particularly those about the stock market.
Finance expert Steve Rattner foresaw "a market crash of historic proportions" under a President Trump. Moody’s warned of a "weaker" economy. Many said 2 percent GDP growth was the best that could be hoped for.
Other doomsayers included Mark Cuban, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin and firms such as Bridgewater Associates and Macroeconomic Advisers. (A less-dishonorable mention goes to Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, who at least walked back his doomsaying about "a global recession, with no end in sight," soon after election night.)
In fact, the Dow has climbed more than 25 percent since Perennial Presidential Campaigner Hillary Crooked Hillary Clinton ... former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away... conceded. And the first two full quarters of Trump’s term both saw growth of 3 percent or more. Oops.
More recently, Trump’s cutbacks of money to help folks sign up for ObamaCare brought warnings that enrollment would surely plummet. Hah! Over the first few days of open enrollment this year, a record number of people signed up, The Hill reported Tuesday.
The first day alone saw 200,000 sign-ups, twice last year’s number, and more than 1 million visited healthcare.gov, versus 750,000 in 2016.
As for all the noise about fascism ...a political system developed in Italy symbolized by the Roman fasces -- thin reeds, each flimsy in itself but unbreakable when bound into a bundle. The word is nowadays thrown around by all sorts of people who have no idea what they're talking about... and tyranny: Trump has scrupulously obeyed the law, even as judges came up with unprecedented legal theories to strike down his "travel ban" executive orders.
None of this guarantees that the markets won’t turn south eventually, or that ObamaCare won’t run into the rocks. But it does tell you that talk of Trump-fueled armageddon is partisan hysteria, unhinged from reality.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/13/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
Trump 2020 when he sees the economy boom from lowering corruption and rent-seeking.
Corruption and rent-seeking being the main fund sources for the swamp.
#4
These people are also the same ones that think that more government control and regulation of businesses will magically increase the GDP and then are shocked when stores go out of business.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Perennial Presidential Campaigner Hillary 
[NYPOST] Foreign tourism to New York City is set to rise 3.6 percent this year ‐ defying yet another of the many doomsday predictions about 
Perennial Presidential Campaigner Hillary 
