Controversial Clinton Team Member Given New Power

Leading Republicans in Congress have launched an inquiry into President Joe Biden’s decision to appoint seasoned Democratic strategist John Podesta as his principal climate envoy, citing the White House’s alleged abuse of power.

As John Kerry’s replacement as special climate envoy, Podesta, a White House consultant on green energy, would supervise the execution of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a significant climate expenditure bill. However, in a letter to the president on Tuesday night, ranking member of the Senate Environment Committee Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) stated that the appointment “seems to be a blatant attempt to go around congressional oversight and hire Mr. Podesta into a position that requires the consent of the U.S. Senate.”

The legislators informed Biden, “We are disturbed about your apparent determination to flout the law. This appointment is just one more instance of your administration’s practice of establishing new offices without specific legislative goals and restrictions or Senate approval. Your delegation of significant policy authority to these persons betrays a brazen contempt for the congressional and constitutionally mandated separation of powers and authority.”

The letter from McMorris Rodgers and Capito coincides with Podesta’s purported involvement in the Biden administration’s decision to halt the issuance of permits for liquefied natural gas in January. Experts in international policy have cautioned that this move might potentially strengthen the hand of rivals abroad, including Russia. Federal lobbying records reveal that Podesta’s brother, Washington power lobbyist Tony Podesta, has long represented foreign LNG firms, such as Golden Pass, which is jointly controlled by the state-run QatarEnergy Petroleum Corporation in Doha, Qatar.

McMorris Rodgers and Capito referenced in their letter how Biden established Kerry’s distinct position as special presidential envoy on climate within the State Department, exempting him from Senate confirmation. Watchdog organizations have scrutinized Kerry’s office for what seems to be a lack of transparency about the withholding of staff members’ identities. In the meantime, Kerry’s office has come under fire for accepting meetings with organizations in China connected to that country’s totalitarian government, and the Republican-led House Oversight Committee began looking into his “collusion with communist environmental groups” in February.

McMorris Rodgers and Capito stated in the letter that “the lack of clear delineation between the authority and policy aims of the State Department and the SPEC Office as the U.S. undertakes foreign policy discussions on environmental and climate problems sows uncertainty locally and abroad.” “That muddled interpretation of agency responsibilities is intended to undermine congressional oversight and public accountability in the United States.”

But in 2021, the president signed a bill mandating Senate approval for any “special envoy” or similar positions in response to legislators’ concerns. The Podesta case in particular has Republican senators perplexed since, as McMorris Rodgers and Capito noted in their letter, “there appears to be no separation between this new title and the work of the SPEC.”

“Mr. Podesta’s appointment to a new title and his location in the White House—rather than the Dept. of State, as his predecessor did—does not absolve him of this legal duty,” the legislators said. “Any unbiased observer would fairly conclude that you designed Mr. Podesta’s ‘new’ position to evade accountability to Congress and undermine oversight efforts by working around recently passed legislation.”