California Governor Gavin Newsom seems to wish ever so badly he was the target of a weaponized Justice Department. God knows he’d have plenty of company, given the Trump administration’s track record: Letitia James, James Comey, Mark Kelly, Jerome Powell, and others found themselves on the receiving end of bogus criminal investigations or prosecutions. But the available evidence and wide public reporting make clear that Newsom’s opportunistic narrative – that he’s yet another victim of Trump’s vindictive henchmen at DOJ – is simply wrong.
The early frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 took to social media last week to announce that he and his wife had been put on Trump’s “hit list.” “He has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us,” Newsom wrote. “He isn’t coming after me because of mean tweets, but because I am considering running for President.” Newsom also released a video in which he awkwardly recites a tagline befitting a generic 80’s action movie: “Mr. President, come after me. I am not going anywhere.”
It’s a great storyline for Newsom: Corrupt president unleashes shady prosecutors to kneecap the leading candidate of the opposition party and neutralize a burgeoning political threat. If only it were true.
The first problem with Newsom’s claim is that the investigation did not originate with Trump or his top political appointees at the Justice Department. Rather, as outlets including CNN and the New York Times have reported, the case developed organically with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California, based on a whistleblower’s complaint. This is a perfectly ordinary way that federal prosecutors initiate and build investigations. A complainant alleges wrongdoing, and then prosecutors and federal agents follow up to either confirm or disprove the claims.
Moreover, the investigation reportedly is focused not on Newsom but his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who proudly calls herself the “First Partner” in running California. While we don’t know nearly enough to conclude that Siebel Newsom has committed any crime, ample factual basis exists for reasonable prosecutors to take a look.
For example, Siebel Newsom is a co-founder of the “California Partners Project,” a nonprofit that promotes workplace equity for women and protection of children from dangerous technology. Since 2020, the group has solicited and accepted donations totalling $1.8 million from a Native American tribe, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. It’s unclear what these generous payments have to do with gender equity or child protection – but that particular tribe happens to hold a lucrative agreement with the State of California to operate a casino in Sonoma County. When another Native American tribe tried to open a competing casino in 2024, Governor Newsom sent a letter urging the Biden administration to reject the application. After that failed, Newsom sued to block the would-be rival casino.
Again, none of this makes Siebel Newsom (or the governor) a criminal. But any competent prosecutor would be justified in investigating. An ethics expert with California Common Cause, a nonpartisan good-government watchdog, told the Orange County Register that so-called “behested” payments to politicians’ charitable projects “are ripe for abuse” and that “politicians in positions of power can direct money in a way that they otherwise would not be allowed to do under campaign finance or conflict-of-interest laws.” Anyone who disdains pay-to-play politics should support investigations like the one into Siebel Newsom.
Beyond donations from the Native American tribe, Siebel Newsom has engaged in some curious self-dealing. The New York Times reports that she runs a nonprofit organization called the Representation Project which (like her aforementioned California Partners Project) advocates on gender equity issues. In 2024, the group paid $161,250 to a film production company called Girls Club Entertainment – which is owned by… Siebel Newsom. There’s nothing facially illegal about this tidy arrangement. But it might be worth a look at how the payments made by one of Siebel Newsom’s organizations to another were handled for accounting and tax purposes.
In his announcement declaring himself a victim of Trump’s DOJ, Newsom made much of the investigative steps purportedly taken by federal agents. He complained that investigators have “knocked on the doors of family, friends, and former employees,” have demanded records, and are “digging through years and years of random documents.” But there’s nothing improper about any of these tactics, and they’re hardly heavy-handed. Even in Newsom’s own telling, federal agents are doing precisely what they ordinarily would and should do to determine whether any crime has been committed. He can say it with a grim demeanor, but these are perfectly normal investigative measures.
This Justice Department has aggressively forfeited the ordinary presumption that it operates fairly and non-politically. At Trump’s explicit urging, DOJ under former Attorney General Pam Bondi and Acting AG Todd Blanche has pursued a string of overtly political payback criminal investigations and prosecutions aimed at the President’s political opponents. Justice Department leadership has fully disgraced itself, and Trump has earned his status as a permanent suspect in any case that might touch on a disfavored Democrat. But he’s not always the culprit. And in this case, it appears that neither Governor Newsom nor Siebel Newsom are victims.
