The Newsoms, the Nonprofits, and the Federal Questions

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff Dana Williamson pleaded guilty last month to three felonies pertaining to campaign finance fraud and federal tax evasion, the governor told Bloomberg News he was shaken – but philosophical. The news had come as a shock, he said, before adding that justice must be served.

Now Newsom is under investigation(s)

“We’ve all got to be held to the letter of the law,” Newsom declared.

That was May. By June, federal agents were knocking on the doors of Newsom’s own friends and family associates — and the governor’s tune had changed considerably.

On Monday, Newsom posted a video accusing President Trump of weaponizing the Justice Department against him, framing several federal investigations into his wife’s taxes and his circle of associates as a politically motivated fishing expedition designed to kneecap a prospective 2028 presidential rival.

Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets. He’s coming after me because I am considering running for president.

The full scope of what is now multiple federal investigations remains unclear. According to the governor’s office, former employees and associates of both Newsom and his wife, documentary filmmaker and California “first partner” Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have been questioned by agents in recent weeks. Newsom’s aides believe banking records have been subpoenaed, though they say they have received no written confirmation of that.

A person familiar with the matter confirmed this week that multiple federal investigations are underway – including one focused on Siebel Newsom’s finances. But that pushed back on Newsom’s central claim, saying the probes were initiated by federal law enforcement officials in California, not directed by the Trump administration in Washington. Indeed, the federal probe that led to Williamson’s guilty plea began during the Biden administration.

Newsom and his nonprofits

So far, the FBI and the Justice Department have yet to comment. The White House referred all questions to the DOJ. At the center of at least some of the federal scrutiny is a web of nonprofit organizations connected to the governor.

Years ago, Siebel Newsom founded the Representation Project, a nonprofit advocating for gender equity through documentary filmmaking. The financial arrangements surrounding the organization have raised eyebrows for years. According to the book, Fool’s Gold, co-written by this reporter, Siebel Newsom’s Representation Project nonprofit paid her a total of $1.5 million in salary between 2013 and 2021 and has funneled $1.6 million since 2012 to her private production company, Girls Club Entertainment – including $161,250 in 2024 alone.

The book revealed that several corporations with contracts or business pending before the state provided five- and six-figure donations to the charity during Newsom’s time as governor.

The films themselves have generated controversy. Fool’s Gold reported that Siebel Newsom produces the documentaries and has then screened them in at least 5,000 public schools in all 50 states, with her organization apparently positioned to collect the licensing fees for screenings.

The Representation Project has released four films – Miss Representation, The Mask You Live In, The Great American Lie, and Fair Play – each packaged with accompanying classroom curricula. Some of that curriculum advises teachers and administrators that students may need to speak with a school counselor after viewing the films and completing assignments, which discuss social privilege, oppression, and gender equality.

Overt political advocacy

The films’ accompanying materials also include what critics have described as overt political advocacy; they feature commentary from Gov. Newsom himself pressing student viewers to organize with friends and vote for politicians supporting a “care economy” that “embraces universal human values” which critics have described as essentially campaign ads.

Several of the films warn teachers to have counselors on hand to manage students’ reactions. Conservative parents have complained that some content in films intended for 15-year-olds, including images of women being physically brutalized sourced from adult websites – is inappropriate for the middle and high schoolers assigned to watch them. The curriculum for The Mask You Live In also promotes nonbinary gender identity through materials including a “genderbread person” charting gender expression, sexual attraction, and gender identity as independently sliding spectrums.

Siebel Newsom is also a co-founder of the California Partners Project, a nonprofit focused on women in corporate leadership and child online safety, which counts among its donors groups with active business before the state government. Gavin Newsom himself has reported soliciting $4.3 million in donations to the California Partners Project since 2020, including $1.8 million from Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a Native American tribe operating a state-licensed casino in Sonoma County. That tribe unsuccessfully fought a smaller tribe’s ability to launch its own casino during the Biden administration.

California law requires public officials to disclose so-called behested payments – donations to charities solicited in their name.

The utility connection

A third entity, the California Protocol Foundation – whose board is stacked with Newsom loyalists from his time as both San Francisco mayor and governor – covers expenses the governor says he doesn’t want taxpayers to fund, including domestic and overseas travel.

The nonprofit arrangements have drawn scrutiny not just from federal investigators but from journalists who have tracked the Newsoms’ financial relationships over years. Among the most striking examples, detailed in Fool’s Gold, involves Pacific Gas & Electric, the Northern California utility giant that has long been one of the state’s most prolific donors to politicians of both parties and also holds the ignominious distinction of being responsible for the deadliest fires in state history.

PG&E’s relationship with the Newsoms goes considerably beyond standard political giving. The utility donated to Siebel Newsom’s film projects so generously that it is listed in the credits of two of her documentaries as an associate producer. PG&E also screened one of those films in the atrium of its corporate San Francisco skyscraper in 2011, when Newsom was lieutenant governor.

Over two decades, Newsom and his wife have accepted a combined $700,000 in donations from PG&E – including $208,400 in campaign contributions from PG&E employees during first gubernatorial campaign alone. The PG&E Corporation Foundation separately donated $10,000 to the PlumpJack Foundation, a charity named after Newsom and Billy Getty’s winery group and led by the governor’s sister, Hilary Newsom.

The Williamson case

The latest scrutiny follows directly on the heels of the Williamson prosecution – a case that, the governor’s office says fully cleared Newsom of any wrongdoing. Williamson pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and lying to federal investigators.

Williamson was, by many accounts, one of the most powerful unelected people in Sacramento. A veteran of Jerry Brown’s administration, a feared kingmaker in Democratic circles, and an operator whom rivals described – not always charitably – as running the Capitol “like a mafia boss,” she came to Gavin Newsom’s office in January 2023 as chief of staff carrying a reputation for getting things done and an appetite for the levers of power that came with the job.

Twenty-three months later, she was gone – quietly resigning in December 2024 amid a federal corruption investigation that few in Sacramento’s tight-knit political world had seen coming.

Last month, Williamson pleaded guilty to a scheme that drained $225,000 from a dormant campaign account belonging to Xavier Becerra, the former HHS secretary who is now the frontrunner to succeed Newsom as governor – and the man whose campaign Williamson had once managed.

Venal corruption

Williamson was also accused of padding her own bottom line, claiming $1.7 million in bogus business deductions to cover luxury goods, vacations, and other personal expenses. Although the trial judge will have the final say, under federal sentencing guidelines, she faces about three years in prison. She and her co-conspirators must also repay the $225,000 to Becerra’s campaign and she owes approximately $500,000 in restitution to the IRS.

Becerra, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing, compared the betrayal to discovering an unfaithful spouse – “a gut punch,” he said.

Federal prosecutors also charged her with lying to the FBI about confidential state litigation information she passed to a former business partner.

Though her plea agreement does not name the client, details closely match a 2021 sex-discrimination lawsuit California regulators filed against video game giant Activision Blizzard, a onetime client of Williamson’s consulting firm. In 2022, Newsom fired the state attorney leading that lawsuit, drawing accusations of interference.

When Williamson was first indicted in November 2025, her attorney revealed that federal agents had approached her during the Biden administration seeking cooperation in an investigation of the governor himself. She declined, saying she had never witnessed criminal conduct by Newsom.

Earlier this year, Newsom’s office responded to Justice Department questions about the 2022 Activision attorney firing. And then, according to a spokesman, federal communication went quiet.

Newsom gets questions, he says, when Todd Blanche becomes acting AG

It resumed, the governor’s office says, right around the time Trump announced he planned to nominate Todd Blanche as attorney general. Blanche, who previously defended Trump in three of his four criminal cases and recently signed an agreement granting the president immunity from tax audits, is now the acting attorney general.

Newsom has not been accused of any crime and he is on offense.  

In his video Monday, the governor accused Trump of “selling the presidency” through golf course approvals, cryptocurrency deals, and acceptance of a private jet, and said he was proud to be on the president’s “hit list.” He pledged to continue challenging what he characterized as White House corruption.

You can subpoena my records. You can investigate me. You can harass me. Put my name on every and any enemies list you have but leave my wife and family out of your personal vendetta.

Siebel Newsom echoed her husband’s defiance.

This is not presidential behavior, and the governor and I will continue to speak truth to power because the American people deserve so much more.

Hours after posting the video, Newsom sent a fundraising email asking supporters to help him pay legal fees to “fight off this political witch hunt.” His office simultaneously filed a public records request with the Justice Department demanding all documents referencing the Newsoms.

Whether the investigations amount to legitimate law enforcement scrutiny or a political vendetta – or some combination of both – may ultimately be answered in court. For now, California’s governor finds himself on the other side of the accountability standard he set just a month ago, reacting to his former top aide’s guilty verdict.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.