[9] As Student Congress President, Podesta spoke at the opening ceremony of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle campus (now UIC) on February 22, 1965.

Others included Joe Duffey for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut in 1970,[9] Ed Muskie and then George McGovern for president in 1972, Ted Kennedy in 1980, Walter Mondale's presidential campaign in 1984, and Michael Dukakis in 1988, the same year the Podesta brothers founded their lobbying firm.

[12] In 1981, Tony Podesta became a founding president of People for the American Way, a secular liberal group started by television producer Norman Lear.

[9] According to The Wall Street Journal, Podesta's lobbying firm performed well in 2015, because clients believed that he had access to a future Hillary Clinton administration.

[15] In 2016, Podesta was on the board of a Vietnamese casino company run by an American businessman who had been barred from the securities industry in United States for defrauding customers.

[18][19][20] In April 2017, the Podesta Group retroactively filed new lobbying reports with the Justice Department that revealed more about its work for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU), a center founded by three senior members of the pro-Russia Party of Regions.

[24][25] On July 31, 2018, it was reported that Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta was referred by special counsel Robert Mueller to federal prosecutors for investigation in New York.