{"id":706025,"date":"2026-06-15T19:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T19:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/706025\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T19:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T19:39:09","slug":"gov-gavin-newsom-says-trump-is-investigating-him-and-his-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/706025\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Gavin Newsom Says Trump Is Investigating Him and His Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal agents have questioned friends and associates of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and his wife, Mr. Newsom said on Monday in a video<\/a> in which he accused President Trump of using the Justice Department to punish a political enemy.<\/p>\n

The full scope of any investigation remains unclear. But Mr. Newsom\u2019s aides say part of the federal investigation appears to focus on his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Former employees of the governor and people affiliated with his wife\u2019s nonprofit groups are among those who have been questioned by agents, according to the governor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

A person familiar with the matter confirmed that multiple federal investigations were underway related to the governor, including one looking at his wife\u2019s finances. But the person disputed Mr. Newsom\u2019s assertion that the investigations were politically motivated, and said they had been initiated by federal law enforcement officials in California, not launched by officials in Washington. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.<\/p>\n

Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, described the investigation as a fishing expedition in which federal agents had started sifting through \u201cyears and years of random documents\u201d and knocking on the doors of family friends and associates of the Newsoms to try to find evidence of an unspecified crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump isn\u2019t just coming after me because of my mean tweets,\u201d Mr. Newsom said in the video. \u201cHe\u2019s coming after me because I am considering running for president.\u201d He added, \u201cTo get me, he\u2019s coming after my wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several people associated with the Newsoms have been contacted by federal agents in the past week, according to the governor\u2019s office. Mr. Newsom\u2019s aides believe the agents have also subpoenaed banking records, but said they had seen no written evidence of that.<\/p>\n

An F.B.I. spokesman and a Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. A White House official referred all questions to the Justice Department. <\/p>\n

Ms. Siebel Newsom, who calls herself California\u2019s first partner, is a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on the social impacts of sexism. She founded a nonprofit organization called the Representation Project that advocates for gender equity, in part by developing educational materials based on Ms. Siebel Newsom\u2019s documentaries.<\/p>\n

Ms. Siebel Newsom also owns a film production company called Girls Club Entertainment. It is listed as a contractor of the Representation Project on the nonprofit\u2019s tax returns. Tax records show that the Representation Project makes annual payments to Girls Club Entertainment. In 2024, the nonprofit paid Girls Club Entertainment $161,250 for film production work.<\/p>\n

Ms. Siebel Newsom is also a co-founder of the California Partners Project, a nonprofit that works to get more women onto corporate boards, address the gender pay gap and make technology safer for children. Some of the donors that support the California Partners Project are groups with business before the state government.<\/p>\n

For years, critics have raised the possibility of self-dealing, but no public evidence of wrongdoing by any of the entities tied to Ms. Siebel Newsom has surfaced, and it remains unclear what precise issues and actions investigators have been asking questions about.<\/p>\n

Mr. Newsom has reported soliciting $4.3 million in donations to the California Partners Project since 2020, according to disclosures filed with the state\u2019s ethics agency. That includes $1.8 million from a Native American tribe that has an agreement with the state to operate a casino in Sonoma County. In California, public officials must disclose donations to charities that are made at the official\u2019s request.<\/p>\n

Another nonprofit group with ties to Mr. Newsom is called the California Protocol Foundation. Its board includes some of Mr. Newsom\u2019s top advisers during his time as governor and previously as the mayor of San Francisco. The foundation pays for initiatives that the governor says he does not want state taxpayers to cover, including his travel overseas for conferences and other meetings.<\/p>\n

Mr. Newsom\u2019s office said the investigation is a fresh attempt to smear him after the federal prosecution of his former chief of staff revealed no misconduct by the governor. The former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, pleaded guilty<\/a> last month to three felonies in a sprawling corruption case.<\/p>\n

One of the crimes Ms. Williamson pleaded guilty to was lying to the F.B.I. about information she had access to while working in Mr. Newsom\u2019s office. In her plea agreement, Ms. Williamson said she gave her former business partner confidential information about state litigation that involved one of their clients and then lied about it when questioned by the F.B.I.<\/p>\n

The agreement does not name the client, but details in the indictment align with a sex-discrimination lawsuit<\/a> that California regulators filed in 2021 against the video game maker Activision Blizzard. The company had been a client of Ms. Williamson\u2019s consulting business before she joined Mr. Newsom\u2019s office. In 2022, Mr. Newsom fired the state lawyer<\/a> leading the suit against Activision, prompting complaints that he was interfering.<\/p>\n

When Ms. Williamson was indicted last year<\/a>, her attorney said that federal agents first approached her during the Biden administration. She was working for Mr. Newsom at the time, and the agents asked her if she would cooperate in an investigation of the governor. She replied that she had no information to give them because she had never witnessed any criminal conduct by Mr. Newsom.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Mr. Newsom\u2019s office responded to questions from Mr. Trump\u2019s Justice Department about his 2022 termination of the lawyer involved in the Activision lawsuit, according to a spokesman for Mr. Newsom. Then the communication from federal officials ceased, the spokesman said.<\/p>\n

The latest inquiries into associates of Mr. Newsom and Ms. Siebel Newsom began around the time Mr. Trump said that he planned to nominate Todd Blanche<\/a> as attorney general, according to the governor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Mr. Blanche had previously defended Mr. Trump in three of the four criminal cases he was facing.<\/p>\n

Nominated to be the number two official at the Justice Department at the beginning of Mr. Trump\u2019s second term, Mr. Blanche \u2014 now the acting attorney general \u2014 has pursued prosecutions of Mr. Trump\u2019s perceived enemies. He also signed an agreement granting the president and his companies immunity from audits of past tax returns to settle a $10 billion lawsuit the president brought against his own government earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Mr. Newsom has been highly critical of Mr. Blanche\u2019s nomination to the top Justice Department position, recently calling<\/a> Mr. Blanche \u201cthe guy covering up the Epstein Files\u201d and saying<\/a> he \u201cgave Trump and his family a lifetime pass to commit tax crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Newsom, in his video address, mentioned that Mr. Trump had called for his arrest<\/a> last year and he said he was proud to join the \u201chit list\u201d of people standing up to the president. He accused Mr. Trump of \u201cselling the presidency\u201d for golf course approvals, cryptocurrencies and a private jet, and pledged to continue calling out what he saw as corruption from the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can subpoena my records. You can investigate me. You can harass me,\u201d Mr. Newsom said. \u201cPut my name on every and any enemies list you have, but leave my wife and family out of your personal vendetta.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal agents have questioned friends and associates of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and his wife, Mr. Newsom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,64483,2356,5648,65786,304851,16675,3,39153,64484,3479,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-706025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-blanche","tag-california","tag-donald-j","tag-gavin","tag-jennifer-siebel","tag-justice-department","tag-news","tag-newsom","tag-todd-attorney","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}