{"id":249832,"date":"2026-04-03T08:30:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/249832\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T08:30:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:30:23","slug":"gavin-newsom-does-not-preside-over-an-empire-of-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/249832\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin Newsom does not preside over an ’empire of fraud’"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dan Walters<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\""A\"
\n\t\t\t\tGov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, exits the Robert T. Matsui Federal Courthouse in Sacramento after her arraignment on Nov. 12, 2025. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters<\/p>\n

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

Gavin Newsom\u2019s management of California\u2019s government has certainly been less than stellar.<\/p>\n

During his seven-plus years as governor, he and a Legislature controlled by fellow Democrats have expanded programs, created new ones, guessed wrong on revenues to support them and overspent the real revenues, thus creating a chronic, multibillion-dollar budget deficit<\/a> that could last indefinitely.<\/p>\n

When Newsom embarks on an almost certain campaign for the presidency after leaving office next year, his managerial shortcomings will likely be cited by Democratic rivals and, were he to win his party\u2019s nomination, by whomever Republicans choose as his opponent.<\/p>\n

But does his record warrant the epithet of \u201cGavin Newsom\u2019s empire of fraud?\u201d<\/p>\n

A newly published article in the City Journal<\/a>, a magazine published by the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, levels that allegation.<\/p>\n

It stitches together a series of fraud cases, instances of sloppy management, questionable assumptions and some mysterious mathematics to allege, \u201cThe best estimates suggest that, on the governor\u2019s watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The centerpieces are two cases that have received copious coverage in California media \u2014 multibillion-dollar fraud in the Employment Development Department\u2019s disbursement of federal unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic and the indictment of Newsom\u2019s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, for facilitating bogus payments from a campaign fund and falsifying documents to obtain pandemic relief funds for her own business.<\/p>\n

The EDD scandal <\/a>is \u2014 or should be \u2014 a black eye for Newsom. But three aspects should not be ignored: It also was happening in other states; it reflected pressure, during the Joe Biden administration, to speed claims processing, and the EDD had hired hundreds of new workers who were not fully trained.<\/p>\n

In citing the Dana Williamson case<\/a>, City Journal declared, \u201cthe culture of fraud in California is so pervasive that it has allegedly reached the governor\u2019s own office.\u201d<\/p>\n

That passage presupposes that California has a \u201cculture of fraud\u201d and then suggests that Newsom is at fault.<\/p>\n

There is fraud, of course. The specific cases cited by City Journal prove that when taxpayer money is being spent on services, it entices some bad actors to cheat. It was happening long before Newsom became governor; it will continue to happen after he leaves. And when it is discovered, people go to jail.<\/p>\n

One situation cited by City Journal warrants special attention because it typifies its sloppy journalism \u2014 a 2024 report by the state auditor<\/a> that the Newsom administration had spent $24 billion to alleviate homelessness but had not adequately tracked whether the money had been spent effectively.<\/p>\n

City Journal implies that the $24 billion was lost to fraud \u2014 it actually wrote the money was a “target” of fraudsters \u2014 but it\u2019s likely that money was spent on various programs, not stolen. Newsom should be held responsible for poor management, but that\u2019s not fraud.<\/p>\n

City Journal sets the stage for its \u201cempire of fraud\u201d assertion with a dystopian description of California:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe roads are crumbling. Mismanaged wildfires have turned neighborhoods into ash. Drug addiction and homelessness have metastasized, turning parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco into no-go zones. And the cost-of-living crisis is pricing middle-class taxpayers out of basic necessities like groceries and gas, even as the state spends billions on welfare programs that never seem to lift anyone out of poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accurate or not, that description has nothing to do with the \u201cculture of fraud\u201d it alleges, but it does reveal something about the article\u2019s obvious intent, which is to smear Newsom in anticipation of his presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Newsom should be held responsible for what he did or did not do as governor, but this is just slinging mud to see if some of it sticks.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dan Walters, CalMatters Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, exits the Robert T. Matsui…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9288,9,8,964,724,50513,457],"class_list":{"0":"post-249832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-budget","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-commentary","13":"tag-criminal-justice","14":"tag-edd","15":"tag-gavin-newsom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}