As the line from the Shakespeare play Hamlet goes, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Just days after Podesta Group founder Tony Podesta resigned, its CEO Kimberley Fritts is leaving to launch her own firm.

POLITICO reports:

Tony Podesta, the firm’s founder, tapped Fritts as his successor when he announced he’d step down as chairman last week, hours after an indictment was unsealed, charging Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, with violating foreign lobbying law. The indictment accused Manafort of hiring the Podesta Group to lobby for an ostensibly independent nonprofit that “was under the ultimate direction” of the Ukrainian president, his party and the Ukrainian government. Fritts had been expected to relaunch the Podesta Group under a new name in the days after Podesta stepped down. But after more than a week of working to hammer out the details of what the new firm would look like, Fritts announced at a staff meeting late this afternoon, that she would resign and start a new firm, exacerbating questions about the future of the Podesta Group and its dozens of employees.

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“Tony Podesta’s name had become a scarlet letter,” one Podesta Group employee told POLITICO, adding “I expect a lot of the top talent will go with her.”

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Tony Podesta, the founder of D.C. lobbying firm the Podesta Group stepped down from the company amid Robert Mueller’s probe. Podesta made the announcement at a company-wide meeting two weeks ago.

POLITICO reports:

Podesta is handing over full operational and financial control to longtime firm CEO Kimberley Fritts, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the meeting. Fritts and a senior group of the Podesta team will be launching a new firm in the next one or two days. Sources said the transition has been in the works for the past several months. “[Tony] was very magnanimous and said, “This is an amazing group of people,” a source said of Podesta’s remarks. Podesta also told staff he “doesn’t intend to go quietly, or learn how to play golf.” He said he “needs to fight this as an individual, but doesn’t want the firm to fight it.”

The Podesta Group was subpoenaed in late August along with four other public relations firms who worked with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort during a 2012-2014 lobbying effort for a pro-Ukraine think tank – the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU) – tied to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

Two of the subpoenaed firms include Paul Manafort’s Mercury, LLC and the Podesta Group, founded by John and Tony Podesta and operated by the latter.