The U.S. Justice Department under the Donald Trump Administration has widened a four year-running investigation into Jennifer Siebel Newsom to include her husband, California Governor Gavin Newsom, as well as a host of the governor’s donors and political associates, including California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the Sentinel has learned.
The original investigation targeting Siebel Newsom was launched by federal investigators serving under then-President Joseph Biden four years ago but had not matured into a prosecution. Siebel Newsom’s proximity to her husband, whose ambition extends to making a run for the U.S. Presidency in 2028, together with suggestions that the couple’s accumulation of wealth involves the exploitation of Newsom’s status as the governor of a state with an annual gross domestic product of $3.39 trillion, has prompted the Trump Administration to undertake scrutiny of a figure who has emerged as one of his more vociferous critics.
At issue in the investigations are donations, both charitable and political to Siebel Newsom’s foundations and the governor’s campaign fund; how those charitable donations have been transformed into roughly $4.1 million in income to Siebel Newsom, sizable real estate transactions involving the couple; arrearages of over $400,000 on property taxes that have yet to result in a lien, long ongoing and never redressed political fund reception and handling reporting violations by the Newsom campaign that have never been addressed or resolved by the California Secretary of State’s office, the existence of a reputed “slush fund” said to have been used to cover the lavish lifestyle of California’s first couple and how the provision of that money to the governor and his wife might have influenced key governmental decisions in Sacramento.
In 2022, inside information which apparently originated with an employee or ex-employee either with one of the two charitable foundations created or co-created by Siebel Newsom or her production company prompted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento to open an investigative file.
Siebel Newsom founded the Representation Project, a non-profit focused on promoting gender equality, challenging gender stereotypes and uplifting and supporting media through media, education and activism in 2011. It began fundraising toward those causes in earnest the following year. In 2019, she cofounded with Olivia Morgan the California Partners Project, a nonprofit which works to get more woman onto corporate boards, address the gender pay gap and make technology and media platforms safer for children. Siebel Newsom also owns a production company called Girls Club Entertainment.
From 2012 until 2019, Siebel Newsom was paid, as the director/executive officer of the Representation Project in the neighborhood of $165,000 to $205,000 per year, while the organization took in an average of around $600,000 per year in donations. Since 2020, as the director/executive director of the Representation Project and the driving advocate of the California Partners Project, she has been paid a combined average of $395,000 a year, while donations to both foundations have approached or exceeded $1.3 million annually.
The arrangements by which Siebel Newsom is a principal in the nonprofit organizations she founded and is paid for her work on its behalf is entirely legal under both California and federal law. Questions, however, have emerged about the propriety and, indeed, the legality of the contracts her company, Girls Club Entertainment, has for producing films and promotional materials for the Representation Project. Girls Club Entertainment put together a multitude of what were characterized as “gender-focused documentaries,” which included The Mask You Live in, Miss Representation, The Great American Lie and Fair Play, specifically for the Representation Project, which licensed them. Those materials were distributed to public schools and educational forums and programs under that license. Reportedly, Girls Club Entertainment realized $1,483,001 on the licensing of the films to schools through the Representation Project alone from 2012 until December 2022. In addition, films produced by Girls Club Entertainment on the same topic and themes – decrying the exploitation of women in the workplace, including a lack of promotion into managerial and administrative positions and roles and a disparity in pay scales favoring men and disadvantaging women – were also licensed by the California Partners Project and provided to both public and privates schools in California.
It is a yet untested theory of federal investigators and prosecutors that the contractual arrangements between Girls Club Entertainment and both the Representation Project and the California Partners Project were not arms length transactions and that the Representation Project and the California Partners Project did not conduct a competitive bid before contracting with Girls Club Entertainment for the production of the films, which thereby were sold for and purchased at an inflated rate.
Investigators have also pursued a tangent exploring several examples of Governor Newsom putting the arm on business owners whose companies have contracts to deliver goods or services to the State of California to make donations to the California Partners Project.
It is the inexplicable inflow of money to the Newsoms that has occurred in anomalous ways and which is seemingly bankrolling a luxurious lifestyle that has also captured the attention of investigators and prosecutors. Both Newsom and Siebel Newsom come from moneyed backgrounds. Newsom’s father, William Alfred Newsom III, was an attorney for J. Paul Getty and Getty Oil. Siebel Newsom’s father, Kenneth F. Siebel Jr., is a successful investment manager.
In the late 1980s, when he was in his very early twenties, Gavin Newsom was given a substantial boost by Gordon Getty, the son of J. Paul Getty, who over the next several years undertook to invest in ten of Newsom’s 12 fledgling business ventures, including PlumpJack Associates L.P., which was registered with the California Secretary of State in May 1991. Newsom and his investors started PlumpJack Winery in 1992, deriving the name from an opera written by Getty.
The PlumpJack Cafe Partners L.P. opened the PlumpJack Café, also on Fillmore Street, in 1993. Thereafter, Newsom and his investors, most prominently Getty, opened other businesses that included the PlumpJack Squaw Valley Inn with a PlumpJack Café in 1994; a Napa Valley winery and the the Balboa Café Bar and Grill in 1995; the PlumpJack Development Fund L.P. in 1996; the MatrixFillmore Bar in 1998; PlumpJack Wines shop in Noe Valley in 1999, PlumpJackSport retail clothing store in Olympic Valley and a second Balboa Café at Squaw Valley in 2000. Subsequently, those operations were expanded to include PlumpJack Winery in Oakville, California, the PlumpJack-owned Cade Winery in Angwin, California and Airelle Wines Inc.
Newsom’s investments included five restaurants and two retail clothing stores and his lowest annual income between 1996 to 2001 was $429,000. In 2002, the value of his business assets reached $6.9 million.
Newsom, a 1989 graduate of Santa Clara University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in political science, supported Willie Brown in his successful 1995 campaign for mayor, volunteering not only as a representative in approaching voters but hosting a private fundraiser at his PlumpJack Café for the former speaker of the Assembly. Brown appointed Newsom to the city’s parking and traffic commission in 1996. Newsom was later elected president of the commission. The following year, 1997, Brown appointed him to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors seat vacated by Kevin Shelley.
It was while he was on the board of supervisors, according to investigators, that what are now recognized as silent partners moved into Newsom’s orbit and became involved in some of the PlumpJack-affiliated enterprises.
In 2004, when Newsom was elected mayor, he divested himself of share of PlumpJack’s San Francisco businesses, while retaining his ownership in the PlumpJack companies outside San Francisco. Prior to moving into the mayoralty, Newsom was at least minimally and in some case more actively involved in the businesses’ operations. Upon becoming mayor, he became far more removed from any day-to-day management or even overarching control of those ventures, and was described with regard to virtually of them as being “a partial owner in absentia.”
In February 2006, he paid $2,350,000 to purchase a mansion in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood. In April 2009, after real estate prices had taken a hit as a consequence of the nationwide mortgage crisis, as Newsom was contemplating a run for California lieutenant governor the following year, he put that home on the market for $3 million.
In November 2010, Newsom successfully vied for lieutenant governor. In November 2011, while in the capacity of lieutenant governor, Newsom and his wife purchased a home in Kentfield in Marin County, for $2.225 million from former Tamalpais Bank CEO Mark Garwood.
Newsom spent the eight years from January 2011 to January 2019 as lieutenant governor while Jerry Brown, another Democrat, was governor.
Newsom was elected governor in November 2018, and in 2019 the Newsoms placed the Kentfield home on the market for $6 million. It sold in 2021 for $5.9 million.
In 2019, Newsom and his family briefly lived in the California governor’s mansion in Sacramento, but vacated that to move into the 12,000-square foot Fair Oaks Mansion 7640 Tobia Way on eight acres beside the American River in the unincorporated Sacramento County area known as the Fair Oaks district on the outskirts of Sacramento.
An LLC registered to Newsom’s cousin and business associate, Jeremy Scherer, who is the co-president of PlumpJack, purchased the Fair Oaks estate for $3.7 million cash in December 2018, a month after Newsom was first elected governor. In 2019, after Newsom was added as a member of the LLC, Scherer “gifted” the property to his cousin. Newsom’s status as a member of the LLC allowed him to avoid a $4,000 real estate transfer tax.
In January 2020, the Newsoms engaged in a very curious move when they entered into a reverse mortgage on the Fair Oaks estate, receiving a $2.695 million tax-free payment in the cash-out refinancing.
Traditionally, reverse mortgages were generally considered loans of last resort that served as a safety net for cash-strapped retirees, as conventional wisdom dictated keeping home equity untouched and only borrowing against it in dire emergencies. More recently, financial planners have latched onto reverse mortgages as strategic tools to be used by those who are well off, but that occurs in cases where market volatility or unexpected downturns in the economy might prompt a well-position investor to sell off elements of an investment portfolio that might have longer-term profitability than real estate. The Newsoms did not appear to be in panic mode with regard to their assets or holdings in 2020.
Catching the eyes of investigators was that in the paperwork for the $2.695 million mortgage, there was no mention that the home had been gifted to the couple by Scherer’s LLC or the Newsoms’ other financial assets. Reverse mortgage payments are not considered taxable income.
According to investigators who have looked at the couple’s spending patterns, that money appeared to have been used to support their accelerated lifestyle.
No previous Californnia governor, with the possible exception of Leland Stanford, spent money while in office at the pace, adjusted for inflation, that Newsom has throughout the entirety of his tenure, according to those looking closely into his finances. Virtually every California governor during the 20th Century, Gray Davis and Jerry Brown in the Third Millennium and even Arnold Schwarzenegger , whose Hollywood lifestyle carried over into his experince as governor, confined themselves to, if not frugal existences while serving as the Golden State’s chief executives in their time, ones that were not overly extravagant. The Newsoms expenses appeared to be spending nearly one million dollars on living expenses every three months.
Given that rate of spending and shortcomings in the Newsoms’, and in particular Governor Newsom’s, financial reporting, investigators have come to believe there is a “slush fund” put up by Newsom’s friends, business associates and political supporters which he has been continuously tapping into.
In March 2023, the Silicon Valley Bank, where Newsom’s PlumpJack Winery, Cade Winery and Odette Winery had their business accounts, failed.
In November 2024, Newsom and his wife formed an entity, MHBD Farms, LLC, the name for which reflected the first names of their four children – Montana, Hunter, Brooklyn and Dutch. Two days later, MHBD Farms, LLC purchased a $9.1 million 5,600-square-foot, six bedroom, five-and-a-half bathroom mansion at 224 Woodland Road in Kentfield from billionaire Daniel Pritzker, the heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune and cousin of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. The property, with its view of Mount Tamalpais, is situated on just under an acre, includes expansive floor-to-ceiling windows, an outdoor area with a swimming pool, a spa, a sculpture-lined garden and a guesthouse. The Newsoms paid 7% above Pritzker’s asking price. Daniel Pritzker has been a major donor to Newsom’s campaigns for San Francisco mayor, lieutenant governor and governor.
Questions have emerged in the media about the actual breadth and depth of the Newsoms’ wealth, and federal investigators are now pursuing answers to speculation as to whether assumptions regarding that wealth and the Newsoms’ assertions regarding it are accurate.
Since Newsom was San Francisco mayor, his involvement in the running of the companies he owns or has an interest in has been sharply limited. There have been conflicting reports as to the degree of his ownership/control of those entities as well as the income generated thereby. Similarly, Newsom’s actual personal wealth has been a subject of dispute. In 2019, upon his installation as governor, all of Newsom’s business holdings were placed in a blind trust.
Newsom’s total assets were estimated to be, in the early stage of his political career, while he was a member of the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors but prior to becoming San Francisco mayor, in the neighborhood of $10 million, although that number zoomed to as high as $30 million around the time he was elected mayor. Over the following two decades, the management of the business entities he held was left to others. Last year, there was a report that Newsom’s assets, including real estate, had grown to a value of $42 million. Despite Newsom’s Democratic Party affiliation and political identification as an advocate of the common man, he has never disputed, and inf fact has seemed to encourage, reporting that emphasizes his accumulation of wealth.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to effect a close, let alone exact, examination of his holdings based upon available documentation, insofar as that documentation is incomplete and has grown more so over the years that Newsom has been in office. Based upon what can be discerned form incomplete, elliptical and missing records and filings, it appears that Newsom’s involvement in the business entities he is associated with is limited to a greater degree than is popularly assumed. Moreover, given the value of those entities and the number of investors and other principals in those companies, it appears the characterization of his wealth has been inflated in some instances and wildly inflated in others.
In 2025, Forbes estimated the stable of PlumpJack Wineries to be worth over $400 million. The provenance of that estimate, and therefore its accuracy, has come under question. PlumpJack currently possesses nine active hospitality and lifestyle brand entities of varying worth in its core portfolio across Northern California. Newsom’s percentage in each of those is not publicly available but one report is that his stake in one of those, at the low end, consists of roughly $130,000 and at the high end, he has ownership shares that are valued at approximately $1.1 million to $1.2 million. In the majority of the rest, the value of what he owns consists of somewhere in the range between $300,000 and $600,000. It thus appears that the value of Newsom’s business entities that come under the PlumpJack umbrella runs to no more than $7 million and more likely to around $6 million. Those assets are not liquid and generate a steady stream of income, which is distributed across the ownership of PlumpJack, of which Newsom holds only a minority percentage, believed to be no greater than 10 percent. Therefore, the value of those holdings would be immediately accessible to him only if he were to sell them. In making an immediate sale, he would likely have to accept selling them at a discounted price.
This explicates, investigators believe, why the Newsoms entered into a reverse mortgage arrangement with regard to the regard to the Fair Oaks property mere months after it was gifted to them. It also lends credibility, in the midst of reports of their expenditure of roughly $3 million per year to support their lavish lifestyle, that a slush fund has been created for them by individuals seeking to influence state policy, and that the governor and his wife have been regularly drawing upon it.
Political donations are a way of life among elected officials in the United States, in California and elsewhere. It is not illegal for politicians to accept donations. Nor is it illegal for a politician to accept money from a donor and then engage in votes or the direction of policy that benefits that donor, as long as the votes made or action taken are not conditional upon the provision of those donations. In the instant investigation into Governor Newsom, prosecutors are exploring whether certain actions by the governor were in exchange for the generosity shown to him or his wife by those who benefited from those actions. Such an exchange of a donation or provision of money for a benefit would constitute, under both federal and California law, a quid pro quo, otherwise referred to as a bribe or kickback.
Newsom who solicited $450,000 from a Northern California tribe, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, to fund his inauguration festivities, then hit the tribe up for another $1.8 million donation to the California Partners Project. In 2024, the Newsom administration joined the tribe’s efforts in court to block a rival casino from being built 15 miles away.
In 2023, Newsom inspired the legislature to pass and then signed into law Assembly Bill 1228, which exempted restaurants/bakeries commonly recognized as fast food establishments from the $20 fast-food minimum wage increase. This applied most conspicuously to Panera Bread, which is owned by Greg Flynn. Flynn contributed $164,000 to Newsom’s gubernatorial campaigns and his effort to overcome a recall in 2021.
In 2019, when Pacific Gas & Electric was being faced with multi-million fines and costs for its negligence with regard to igniting wildfires, including the Camp Fire, Newsome promoted and signed Assembly Bill 1054, which created a $21 billion wildfire fund, with California’s taxpayers taking up half of that slack and allowing Pacific Gas & Electric and other electrical utility companies in California to pass the responsibility for the remaining $10.5 billion on to their ratepayers. Subsequently, Pacific Gase & Electric donated $200,000 to Newsom’s inauguration and just under $400,000 to Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit, the Representation Project.
Between 2018 and 2019, UnitedHealth donated a total of $220,000 to Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign and other political action committees he controlled. Newsom awarded $492 million in contracts to UnitedHealth subsidiaries in no-bid contracts and expedited arrangements.
A major issue discovered by investigators is Newsom’s failure to make timely, and in some cases any, reports of donations provided to him directly and the California Secretary of State’s unwillingness or failure to enforce the reporting requirements that apply to the governor. In certain instances, no reports were made. In others, the reports were filed belatedly. According to investigators, there were reports filed but they disappeared at some point from the public record, as was demonstrated when the documents were not available through the California Secretary of State’s Office but later turned up through inquiries with the past treasurer of Newsom’s campaign. At least some of that documentation appeared to have been hidden for a specific purposes, generally to prevent a connection being drawn between the largesse the governor had received and action his administration had taken to benefit those donors.
Last week, following contacts federal investigators had made with those in Newsom’s circle – consisting of friends, donors, both business and political associates and state employees – the California Fair Political Practices Commission made a finding that the governor had failed to make a timely report of more than $5.6 million in behested payments and fined him and his office $31,500 for withholding that information.
A “behested payment” is a donation solicited from a donor by a politician, as in this case the governor, for purposes prioritized and explicitly earmarked by the politician. Those purposes can range from charitable purposes embraced by the politician to efforts involving charities of government agencies to redress challenges faced by an individual, groups of residents or cities/governmental agencies. In this case, the California Fair Political Practices Commission focused upon a call Newsom had made for a number of entities, most of them companies or corporations, to assist in the recovery effort during and following the Los Angeles Wildfires, which began on January 7, 2025 and were not fully contained until January 31, 2025. Newsom, as governor, had proclaimed a state of emergency on January 7, 2025. Newsom sought financial assistance for the California Fire Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization which supports firefighters and fire victims, and 36 entities responded. In response, Uber donated $20,000; BlackRock threw in $500,000; PayPal laid out $250,000; DoorDash provided $50,000; Sony Corporation America ponied up $50,000; Uber Eats gave $500,000; Lockheed Martin shelled out $500,000; Kaiser disbursed $100,000; the Chuck Lorre Foundation bequeathed $1,000,000; the Anthem Blue Cross Foundation chipped in $500,000; Clayco put up $150,000; Target came through with $200,000; Orrick requited $19,735; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld LLP proffered $50,000; the KPMG US Foundation remitted $25,000; Apple rendered $250,000; the Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz Foundation coughed up $100,000; United Airlines bestowed $50,000; the John & Marcia Goldman Foundation kicked in $25,000; Verizon plunked down $150,000; Universal Music Group handed over $10,000; Annenberg Foundation footed the bill for $55,000; Paramount Studios dug up $100,000; Sony Pictures Entertainment defrayed $7,100 of the California Fire Foundation’s burden; D’ Leon Consulting Engineers Corp forked over $25,000; the Klarman Family Foundation bore $25,000 of the expense; United Airlines flew in $25,000; American Express provided $150,000; the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation made a $47,418 gesture; Levi Strauss & Co handed up $25,000; Next Era Energy discharged $50,000 of the California Fire Foundation’s costs; Amazon floated $200,000; AT&T phoned in $100,000 and Estee Lauder reeked of $225,000. Newsom and his office failed to timely file a behested payment report for all of these “contributions,” along with some others.
The $31,500 fine represented 18 separate fines of $1,750 each.
The Sentinel is informed that like California Secretary of State, the head of the California Fair Political Practices office staff, Executive Director Galena West, and General Counsel David Bainbridge are concerned of the perception that as the state’s top political watchdog, it failed to hold Newsom to account. The California Fair Political Practices Commission Chairman, Adam Silver, was appointed by Newsom. Fair oaks
Notably, when Scherer gifted the Fair Oaks estate to Newsom and his wife, complaints were lodged with the Fair Political Practices Commission, both before and after the ploy of utilizing the reverse mortgage to give the Newsoms a $2.695 million tax-free infusion of funds, the FPPC concluded that what had occurred was a form of “money laundering,” a violation of gift limits or improper in any way. At the time the purchase was made, Newsom still owed $3.2 million on the home he had been living in previously. He subsequently realized a profit of $2.7 million when he sold that property for $5.9 million. Critics have suggested the Fair Practices Commission was covering for Newsom because of his power position in the state.
Federal investigators are highly suspicious of the way the 2024 purchase of the Kentfield property was structured. The formation of the MHBD Farms, LLC was a legal dodge to avoid property taxes, gift taxes and reporting requirements. Where the Newsom’s obtained the money to make the purchase is not clear, leading to an investigative theory that some entity unknown supplied the couple with money they have not reported. It would not appear that, based on income alone, the Newsoms, despite their wealth, could have qualified for a loan to finance the purchase of the property, especially given their other financial commitments.
Newsom is paid $203,939.40 in base salary from the State of California for his role as governor, together with $95,063.16 in benefits. He is due to leave that post in January 2027. Assuming his wife can maintain her yearly income of $395,000 a year from the Representation Project and the California Partners Project after her husband is no longer in the position of governor to scare up donations to those entities, it would not appear the couple would be able to meet their mortgage payments.
The annual mortgage on the Marin County mansion property would run anywhere from $330,000 to $384,000 per year, together with an annual property tax bill of slightly more than $117,000.
Of focus in the investigation is what quid pro quos or exchanges were made between Newsom and Li Ke, a Chinese businessman who transits between the People’s Republic of China and the United States on a frequent basis.
Ke, the executive vice president of the China-based BYD Company and president of its subsidiary BYD Americas, donated $20,000 to Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign in 2018. He made another $30,000 donation to Newsom’s successful 2022 reelection effort.
According to investigators, initial concern that federal law restricting donations from foreign nationals to American politicians had been broken was determined to have been misplaced when it was determined that Ke had a green card. U.S. law carves out an exception to the aforementioned restriction if the foreign national in question holds a green card, which allows that foreigner to donate to any federal, state, or local campaign or candidate.
Nevertheless, there have been questions about what Ke and BYD are actually involved in within the American business sector, with recurrent suspicions that either or both corporate espionage or military espionage were at play.
Newsom grew close to both Ke and BYD, and the BYD Americas has obtained over a billion dollars worth of U.S. and California government contracts. Those contracts involved BYD Americas being provided with sensitive information.
In 2023, Newsom traveled to Shenzhen, China, where he was received by Ke and other BYD executives and Chinese government officals at BYD’s corporate headquarters. in 2023.
BYD is involved in the manufacturing of electrical vehicles, electronics and automotive components, rechargeable batteries and energy storage systems and public transportation and rail transit systems.
Li and her husband, BYD’s billionaire founder and CEO Wang Chuanfu, are both members of the Chinese Communist Party and close associates of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Within the last two-and-a-half weeks, the Pentagon formally classified BYD as a Chinese military company, blacklisting it to restrict its access to a host of U.S.-developed technologies it was previously given access to.
Investigators are interested in learning what Newsom might have done to enhance BYD’s access to sensitive corporate and military related technologies, potentially in exchange for money that was provded to him by Chuanfu through Li.
In November, Dana Williamson, who was once Newsom’s chief of staff and the chief of staff of former Congressman and former federal Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, was indicted on charges that she was involved in a conspiracy to illegally funnel money from what at that time was Becerra’s dormant campaign account to herself and others.
As federal investigators and prosecutors were closing in on her but before her indictment, Williamson, spoke with the US Attorney’s Office in Sacramento, the Sentinel is reliably informed.
She was questioned intensely with regard to matters pertaining to Newsom. One such issue was the Newsom Administration’s relationship with the gaming company Activision, against which the California Civil Rights Department had alleged featured a culture of sexual harassment and sexism before the matters was settled with the payment of a $50 million fine.
It is unclear what information the U.S. Attorney’s office might have wrung from Williamson during that questioning session.
On May 14, 2026, Williamson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud, subscribing to a false tax return, and making false statements to a federal agent.
In preparation for his 2018 gubernatorial run, Gavin Newsom in 2017 pledged to release his tax returns. He has since walked that back, and investigators, in the words of one federal agent, have sensed that as “an indication of blood in the water” and have consequently intensified their focus on what they have characterized as Siebel Newsom’s hedging and underreporting/hiding of her actual income.
On Monday, Newsom released a four minute and 43 second video in which he acknowledged he and his wife are the target of a federal investigation.
It was the governor’s contention that the probe is politically motivated, and that what is being orchestrated against him and his wife is merely an effort to prevent his ultimate progression upward from California’s governorship to that of the nation’s chief executive.
“In recent days, federal agents have knocked on the doors of family, friends, and former employees, not because they found a crime, because they’re simply trying to find one,” Newsom said. “They’re demanding records. They’re abusing the grand jury process, digging through years of random documents. Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets. He’s coming after me because I’m considering running for president, because he hates that I’ve consistently called him out over and over again because of his lies and deceit.”
Newsom then hit on his major theme: If he, as California governor is a crooked politician, he is merely a piker in that regard in comparison to the president of the United States.
“Donald Trump is simply the most corrupt president in American history,” Newsom said. “He’s turned the levers of government into his own personal power ministries, to reward cronies and try to jail his opponents. His personal attorney now runs the Department of Justice, which has repeatedly gone after his political enemies. One by one, anyone who has challenged Donald Trump has ended up on his hit list. Today, I proudly join that list. After calling for my arrest last year, Donald Trump directed his Department of Justice to investigate me.”
Newsom then moved on to his secondary theme, pertaining to how the Trump Administration was hitting below the belt by training its investigative resources on his wife.
“Just in the last week, I’ve learned that his campaign has reached my own home,” Newsom said. “To to get me, he’s coming after my wife, Jen, a public servant, a woman who’s dedicated her life to supporting women and girls, someone who has done nothing wrong other than have the temerity to advocate for what she believes in. If they can’t intimidate me, they’ll go after the mother of our children.”
In this way, Newsom sought to suggest that there was no substance whatsoever to the long-simmering suspicions that he was using his authority as governor to steer donations – massive donations – to the foundations created and controlled by his wife. Newsom sought to divert attention from charges that he was exploiting the power of his office to enrich his family by accusing the president of exploiting the power of his office and doing so on a much grander scale.
“Donald Trump picked the wrong target,” Newsom asserted. “We have nothing to hide. His political operatives can take every record and read every page, but they’ll be looking in the wrong place, because if they really want to find corruption, look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Donald Trump is selling the presidency. He’s running the largest cash heist in American political history, trading foreign tariff relief for approval of his golf courses, day trading behind the resolute desk, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in personal profit. He’s doing it openly. He’s doing it on camera. He did it last night on the White House lawn. He’s doing it through cryptocurrencies. He’s doing it through the receipt of a $400 million private jet from a foreign country that he plans to keep when he leaves office, through his sons’ ventures in countries where his own administration is simultaneously making policy. His personal fortune has skyrocketed to $4 billion since making his return to office. This is the behavior of a regime, not a republic. The White House has become a marketplace for sneakers and coins and watches, cologne, guitars, Bibles and phones, influence for sale, access for sale. Today, my family and I can personally confirm that justice is for sale. To Donald Trump who I know is watching because he watches everything, I have a message for you: You can subpoena my records. You can harass me, put my name on any and every enemies list you have, but leave my wife and family out of your personal vendetta.”
Newsom once more propounded, without getting into the details of the accusations against her, that his wife’s lucrative operation her foundations in the wake of his solicitation of donations for them, was not improper or criminal in nature.
“I’d like to say something to my wife,” he said. “These times are not normal. They’re not ordinary. I love you, and I’m sorry he’s doing this. You have not earned a single one of the indignities he’s trying to inflict on you and our children.”
The real message should be, Newsom said, is that Donald Trump is a bad actor and that as governor he is heroically standing in opposition to him.
“And to Donald Trump, this country does not belong to you,” Newsom said. “It does not belong to your cronies, and we’re going to fight your lawlessness. We’re going to continue to remind the people of this country of your corruption, that same corruption our founders warned us against as we move to celebrate out 250th anniversary. I’m going to keep reminding Americans of what they warned would happen if a man of no character ever held the office of presidency. So, let me say it again, Mr. President, come after me. I’m not going anywhere, and the country is watching.”