White House senior adviser John Podesta will add international climate policy to his job responsibilities, replacing special climate envoy John Kerry as the top U.S. official on international climate issues, the White House said Wednesday.

Podesta will take over Kerry's responsibilities, though not his title, when he departs, likely this spring, the White House said.

Kerry's job was created by the Biden administration specifically to fight climate change on the global stage. His appointment did not require confirmation by the Senate, but a law passed in 2022 requires that special envoys reporting to the secretary of State will have to win Senate approval.

In a step a move to circumvent Senate oversight, Podesta was not named as climate envoy but rather a senior adviser to the president for international climate policy.

The founder of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, Podesta previously oversaw Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 presidential campaign.

He was notoriously at the forefront of the so-called Pizzagate scandal after Wikileaks published emails from his hacked account that showed him using coded language similar to that used in pedophile communities on the dark web.

The messages fueled growing suspicions and conspiracy theories that Podesta and many of his powerful Democrat associates may have been operating a Satanic child-sex ring, although the evidence was never substantiated apart from his emails.