Kimberley Fritts decided to start a new firm after being selected as Tony Podesta's successor at the Podesta Group. | Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call Former Podesta Group CEO launches new firm

Kimberley Fritts, the Podesta Group’s longtime chief executive, has launched a new lobbying shop, she said on Thursday.

Tony Podesta stepped down as the Podesta Group’s chairman last month and tapped Fritts as his successor. But negotiations with Podesta to turn over control of the firm broke down, and Fritts quit last week, saying she’d start a new firm instead.


Many of the Podesta Group’s top lobbyists are following Fritts to the new firm, Cogent Strategies, along with at least 15 clients, according to a person familiar with the firm’s plans. Fritts is still looking for office space for the firm.

“Cogent Strategies will bring together an incomparable group of strategists who will continue grow and innovate to enhance advocacy efforts,” Fritts said in a statement. “I’m excited to assemble and grow a team that will deliver winning results for clients.”

The new firm is expected to retain the Podesta Group’s wide range of lobbying, with a focus on technology, financial services and energy work, according to the person familiar with the firm’s plans. The firm will do foreign lobbying, public relations and digital work, too.

About 40 percent of the roughly 60 staffers who worked at the Podesta Group last month are heading to Cogent, including 18 of the Podesta Group’s 27 principals and all four of its senior vice presidents. Just one of the Podesta Group’s seven vice presidents, Shellie Purvis, has made the move so far, according to Cogent’s website, and none of the firm’s directors or other, more junior staffers.

Others are planning to start their own shops or join other firms.

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Josh Lahey, a Podesta Group principal, said this week that he was starting a new firm called Lot Sixteen with Colin Hayes, a former Senate staffer. And Paul Brathwaite, another principal, also started his own firm, Federal Street Strategies.

The Podesta Group was the No. 3 lobbying firm in Washington last year, with revenues of more than $24 million. But the firm’s future was thrown into uncertainty when Tony Podesta stepped down hours after an indictment was unsealed charging Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, with breaking foreign lobbying law. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, as part of his probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

The indictment charged neither Tony Podesta nor the Podesta Group — identified as “Company B” — with crimes. But it accused Manafort of hiring the firm to lobby for a nonprofit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine that was ostensibly independent but “under the ultimate direction” of the Ukrainian president, his party and the Ukrainian government. A number of clients and staffers cut ties with the firm after Tony Podesta’s departure.

Less than three weeks after Tony Podesta stepped down, the Podesta Group is a shell of the old firm. Fritts told staffers at a meeting last week to pack up their desks, saying Wednesday might be the firm’s last payday.

In a statement to POLITICO last week, Tony Podesta said he hoped Fritts “and her team of former Podesta Group colleagues will build a firm that is even more successful than the Podesta Group.”