What the federal probe of Newsom and the first partner means for his presidential ambitions

Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed in a video and a social media post that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating him and his wife, framing it as a political attack by President Donald Trump.

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

“To get me, he’s coming after my wife,” Newsom continued. His spouse, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who adopted the title of “first partner” after Newsom became governor, issued her own retort, saying, “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.”

Although there was no official a confirmation, numerous political media outlets verified from off-the-record sources that an inquiry about Siebel Newsom’s for- and nonprofit organizations is underway.

Siebel Newsom is a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on sexism. Her nonprofit organization called the Representation Project advocates for gender equity using her documentaries, and it pays Siebel Newsom’s for-profit company, Girls Club Entertainment, for the films.

In required disclosures, Newsom has acknowledged soliciting $4.3 million in donations to another Siebel Newsom organization, the California Partners Project, since 2020.

Right-wing media gleefully celebrated the disclosure as bolstering allegations that Siebel Newsom — and implicitly Newsom — had benefited financially from contributions that corporate interests had made to her activities, some of them so-called “behested” payments that Newsom had solicited.

The California Post, an offshoot of the right-leaning New York Post, ginned up a lengthy opinion article portraying Newsom as having “a long trail of corrupt connections” dating back to his days as mayor of San Francisco.

Meanwhile, media figures who ordinarily would have been supportive of Newsom acknowledge that soliciting contributions to his wife’s activities opened the door.

“Those donations, known as ‘behested payments,’ aren’t illegal in California, but, long before Newsom started asking for them, many have found them unsavory — with good cause,” Los Angeles Times columnist Anita Chabria wrote. “A behest, after all, is by definition a command or at least a strong suggestion.”

New York Magazine, in a lengthy piece by former prosecutor Elie Honig, cited a list of political enemies that President Trump has attempted to besmirch or prosecute and concluded that Siebel Newsom’s interconnected for- and nonprofit organizations and Newsom’s behested contributions were legitimate fodder for official scrutiny.

“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,” Honig wrote. “But he’s not always the culprit. And in this case, it appears that neither Governor Newsom nor Siebel Newsom are victims.”

So there it lies. Federal agents are sniffing around and Newsom decided to make a preemptive strike, framing it as an effort by Trump to damage the governor’s almost certain run for the White House in 2028.

The situation begs for deconstruction.

The most obvious aspect is that if the investigation was ordered up by Trump, it is just about the greatest political favor he could have given Newsom.

The California governor has risen to the top of the shadow campaign for president on his self-appointed position as Trump’s harshest opponent. Thus, being the subject of an investigation makes him — he certainly must hope — a hero, even a martyr, within the Democratic Party.

Accordingly, Newsom’s political apparatus immediately sent out a plea for contributions to help him fight off the investigation.

Honig has it right in New York Magazine. The behested payments and Siebel Newsom’s tangled array of private organizations invite scrutiny. The outcome, if there ever is one, could either boost or torpedo Newsom’s presidential ambitions.