Gavin Newsom would like you to know that the federal criminal investigation into who has been financing his lifestyle is a political witch hunt.
Sure. Let's look at the witch.
Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of California issued subpoenas this month demanding six years of records from the California State Protocol Foundation. That is the private nonprofit that has been paying for the governor's international travel. The subpoenas, signed by an assistant U.S. attorney, want the donor list, the fundraisers, the receipts, and communications with Newsom and his inner circle. It is all headed to a grand jury.
And here is the detail everyone skipped past. Investigators are also seeking records on money spent on the governor's residence, his living costs, and his personal expenses.
His residence. His living costs. His personal expenses.
Paid by somebody. We are not told who.
A quick word about the man delivering the sermons.
This is the governor who has built an entire national brand on lecturing Americans about dark money in politics. Billionaires buying influence. Corporations corrupting democracy. Secret donors pulling strings. He says it on his podcast. He says it on television. He will absolutely say it again in Iowa in about eighteen months.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the bills apparently get sent somewhere else.
Who funds a nonprofit that pays for a governor's overseas trips and his housing? What do they do for a living? Do any of them happen to hold state contracts, permits, or regulatory matters currently sitting on a desk in Sacramento?
Newsom has not said. The foundation has not said. That is precisely why a grand jury is now going to ask.
And this is the guy who already has a hospitality problem.
Californians will recall November 2020, when the governor who had personally instructed them not to gather with other households was photographed dining at the French Laundry, one of the most expensive restaurants in America, at a lobbyist's birthday party, indoors, unmasked, elbow to elbow.
He apologized for the optics. Not the meal. The optics.
Six years later, federal prosecutors want to know who has been picking up the tab on everything else.
Then there's the $7.5 million.
Separate from the foundation, a review of state records found Newsom has directed more than $7.5 million in donations from outside groups since 2019 through California's behested payments system.
Here is how that works. The governor asks a donor to write a check to a cause he likes. The donor, who very often has business pending before the state, writes it. Everybody smiles. No law is broken.
Seven and a half million dollars in favors requested by a sitting governor from people who need things from him, and the official position is that this is fine because there is a form for it.
A form nobody reads. In a database nobody checks. Covering a practice that would get a city councilman indicted in most of America.
And the money that actually was the taxpayers'.
While we are auditing the governor's finances, California has spent roughly $24 billion on homelessness over five years, and a top federal prosecutor has said publicly that nobody can account for where much of it went. He called Newsom the king of fraud on national television.
Twenty-four billion dollars. Tents are still on the sidewalks in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. The money went somewhere. Ask the man in charge and you get a press conference about Donald Trump.
The obligatory legal note, which we will make honestly.
No charges have been filed. The subpoenas do not name a specific crime. Newsom has not been accused of anything and is entitled to the presumption of innocence, same as anyone.
We will hold that line, because we demand it for our own side and we are not hypocrites about it.
But a presumption of innocence is not a presumption of privacy. Newsom is a public official who wants to be President of the United States, and the public is entitled to know who has been financing the lifestyle of the man asking for the job.
Here is the demands:
Release the donor list.
Not through a grand jury. Not through a subpoena. Not in two years after the lawyers finish arguing. Today, voluntarily, in full, with names and amounts and dates.
If the money is clean, it takes an afternoon and the story dies. If Gavin Newsom would rather fight federal prosecutors for six years of records than simply tell California who has been paying for his travel and his house, then every voter in America should draw the obvious conclusion.
He is not fighting a witch hunt.
He is fighting disclosure.
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