The think tank, the Center for American Progress, and its president, John Podesta, are uniquely integrated with the transition. Where's transparency of Podesta group?

Barack Obama’s transition has set a high standard for transparency, putting the details of its contributors online sooner than required, and even demanding that former President Bill Clinton reveal the 200,000-plus donors to his personal foundation.

But the transition’s commitment to publicizing the names of donors has an exception: The transition is closely tied to a Democratic think tank that keeps many of its donors secret.


The think tank, the Center for American Progress, and its president, John Podesta, are uniquely integrated with the transition. Podesta, on leave from the Center for American Progress (CAP), heads the transition operation. The transition's operations director, general counsel, and co-director all shifted from similar jobs at CAP, and the transition is full of lower-level former CAP staffers or current board members.

“If there’s a concern that donations to Bill Clinton’s charitable foundations may create conflicts between what he’s doing and what Hillary Clinton may be doing as Secretary of State, then the connections between donors and the folks who are overseeing the whole transition is a legitimate question,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, which pushes for government transparency and voluntarily discloses its own donors.

“I don’t think that for them as a non-profit, that secrecy is the best policy for them, or even a necessary policy,” he said.

CAP has taken steps to avoid any conflict between its officials’ think-tank and transition roles. But the group has hardly kept its Obama connections a secret from donors.

Podesta spoke about transition issues to a leading conference of Democratic donors on November 13 – though he was listed in the program as a former White House chief of staff, not the head of the transition team. And the invitation to a CAP event Monday evening in New York promises “insider’s view of policy ideas for the next administration.”

The vice president for communications for CAP, Jennifer Palmieri, said the group is trying to avoid even the appearance of a link between its fundraising and Podesta’s transition work. In fact, she said CAP has suspended active fundraising solicitations while Podesta is on leave “in an abundance of caution and to avoid any confusion regarding John Podesta's current role at the Presidential Transition Office.” The group is continuing to accept checks and online donations.

Palmieri also noted in an emailed response that the 501(c)3 non-profit and its associated 501(C)4 political wing, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, are entirely within their legal rights in not disclosing donors. She said fundraisers will resume after the inauguration.

“American Progress follows all financial disclosure requirements. A majority of our funding sources is already publicly known as all of our Foundation and largest individual donors have made their support public,” Palmieri wrote. The group raised more than $31 million last year. “We respect the privacy of supporters who have chosen not to make their donations public,” Palmieri said.

The precise definition of fundraising, in the elite world of Democratic mega-donors in which CAP operates, can be a bit ambiguous, however. Eleven days after Obama’s election, for instance, Podesta appeared at the conference of the Democracy Alliance, an organization of wealthy Democrats, which Podesta also helped establish. The gathering was not a fundraiser – direct solicitations were barred, in fact – but the organization’s purpose is to finance groups like CAP, and its conferences are quietly competitive forums at which organizations can strut their stuff before potential donors.

Palmieri said Podesta attended on the condition that – though he was currently leading the transition, and absent from CAP – “he would appear in his personal capacity and not as a representative of the Transition.” She said that during the transition, he hadn’t spoken to any other donor or industry groups that finance CAP.

His presence, on a panel called “Making Change Happen – Presidential Transitions” was billed as focusing on “lessons learned from the past transitions and how we can best use those lessons to inform our strategy for moving a progressive agenda forward. His appearance was unremarkable, three people present said, and disappointed the audience in not revealing any inside secrets.

It was a mark of how interlaced CAP and the transition are that Palmieri, who remains at CAP, conveyed to Politico answers to Podesta that were originally asked of a transition spokesman. And that role is, historically, unique.

The recent parallel typically cited is the Heritage Foundation’s work to inform Ronald Reagan’s transition to the White House in 1980. Heritage produced a thick tome with policy suggestions, and CAP has a similar volume due out next month. But the Heritage Foundation house historian, Lee Edwards, said its staff wasn’t similarly absorbed into the powerful mechanics of transition, which will give structure and staff to the Obama administration.

“There was nothing like that intimate relationship between Heritage and the Reagan transition,” said Edwards, a distinguished fellow at the conservative foundation who worked on the 1980 project.

Though the Center for American Progress isn’t currently fundraising, it has not been shy in advertising its elite status to donors. An email circulated to prominent New York backers last week advertised “an insider’s view of policy ideas for the next administration from the leading progressive think tank.” The event is scheduled for Monday night at a New York art gallery that often hosts political events.

“This reception (which is not a fundraiser) is a unique opportunity for a behind-the-scenes conversation with nationally renowned experts from The Center for American Progress Action Fund, the think tank John Podesta founded 5 years ago,” said the invitation. Podesta is not expected to attend.

A democratic consultant who circulated the invitation, Erica Payne, wrote that the briefing would “offer a very informed view of what is happening inside this process.”

Meredith McGehee, the policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, said the promise of an “insider’s view” seemed to cross the line.

“I find that a bit troubling because it looks they’re cashing in on their special relationship with the president-elect for the benefit of a non-profit,” she said.

“It makes me wince a little bit because it does give this feeling of insider access to people who are large donors. That would be fine if that was the center’s business, but now this is the public’s business.”

The executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Melanie Sloan, said, “I don’t see a problem” with the Democracy Alliance appearance or the New York event. (A participant at the Democracy Alliance gathering, she also confirmed that Podesta made no news there.) “Anybody for the past eight years giving to CAP would have known that the people involved in CAP were likely to be in the next Democratic administration,” she said. Major Democratic donors, she noted, are “exactly who gives to CAP anyway.”

One additional twist on Podesta’s status is his brother’s place as a major Washington lobbyist, the founder of the Podesta Group. Lobbying disclosure filings showed no major uptick in Tony Podesta’s client list between the second and third quarters of this year, and Palmieri said John Podesta has “a policy that he does not discuss Transition matters with his brother, nor does he discuss matters related to his brother's clients.”

Tony Podesta said in an interview that he’s also careful to keep his brother’s work at arm’s length. He said he has never introduced a client to John or had a meeting with his brother while John worked at the White House, CAP or, now, as head of the transition. Tony Podesta said has never been to the transition office and hasn’t visited CAP in over a year.

Podesta said he doesn’t advise his clients on the transition or interact with the transition team. That work is handled by his partner, Paul Brathwaite. “I have not gotten any transition business. No one has hired us to work on the transition. I can state that unequivocally,” Tony Podesta said.

While he maintains a professional distance from his brother’s work, he doesn’t hesitate to encourage others to support CAP.

“What my brother’s done is amazing and terrific and I’ve told people they should support it, but I don’t bring people there or arrange tours. We don’t have a red phone or anything,” he said. “People ask me what think tanks they should support in Washington, I say CAP. But I don’t get a commission. I don’t get a meeting. I think anyone, any of my competitors who were asked the same question would say the same thing.”