Add The California Post on Google Gavin Newsom recently claimed that federal agents had launched an inquiry targeting him and his wife, and proclaimed his innocence.
Yet over nearly three decades in California politics, Newsom has amassed a network of appointees, employees, and associates implicated in a range of ethical violations and criminal offenses. (Newsom has never been charged or implicated in connection with any of the figures or incidents discussed below.)
Governor Newsom appointed Dana Williamson, a “bareknuckle political brawler,” as chief of staff in January 2023. Less than two years later, she left the governor’s office after becoming the subject of a federal corruption probe. Last month, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud.
Williamson was allegedly involved in multiple corrupt schemes that began before she joined Newsom’s office. In one, prosecutors say, she and two others conspired to drain $225,000 from a dormant campaign account belonging to Xavier Becerra. In another, Williamson claimed bogus business expenses worth $1.7 million, which she used to purchase luxury vacations and “private jet travel.”
Newsom served as San Francisco mayor from 2004 to 2011. One of his most enduring “accomplishments” was boosting the political career of London Breed, the future city mayor who proceeded to commit multiple ethics violations.
Then-Mayor Newsom appointed Breed to San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency Commission in 2005 and named her to a post at San Francisco’s Fire Commission in 2010.
As mayor, Breed presided over the creation of the city’s racialist “Dream Keeper Initiative” and a range of scandals. In 2021, San Francisco’s Ethics Commission fined her nearly $23,000 for “Violating Campaign Finance, Ethics, and Gift Laws.”
Mohammed Nuru was a public works official under Mayor Newsom. In 2020, Nuru was arrested for his role in a massive bribery and corruption scandal. He had allegedly orchestrated a bribe-and-kickback racket spanning more than a decade.
In 2022, Nuru pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Nuru had reportedly volunteered on Newsom’s first mayoral campaign while serving in city government. In 2003, Nuru allegedly helped orchestrate a coercive voting scheme through the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG), a city-funded nonprofit under contract with his department.
Newsom won a narrow runoff. He received roughly 25,600 more absentee votes than his opponent — the same ballot type that nine workers alleged they were coerced into casting for Newsom.
Nuru claimed at the time that he never pressured anyone. A Newsom spokesman at the time reportedly “said that Nuru had served as a campaign volunteer but that the new mayor had no knowledge of the allegations or the investigation.”
Peter Ragone, Newsom’s spokesman at the time, said: “There’s zero tolerance for anything like that — there was zero tolerance for that on the campaign, and it will be the same while he is mayor. … If there is due cause, there should be a fast and fair investigation.” Newsom was never charged or accused of legal wrongdoing in the case.
Newsom and Nuru are both reportedly connected to a man named Walter Wong. In 2020, the Department of Justice announced that Wong had been charged with multiple fraud-related counts. In 2020, he reportedly pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. As part of a settlement, Wong and his companies agreed to repay the city nearly $1.5 million for contracts and grants “awarded through a rigged process.”
Wong, one of San Francisco’s “most well‑known permit expediters,” apparently helped clients push applications through the city’s byzantine bureaucracy.
Newsom’s reported connection to Wong stems from a business venture. In 2003, a report emerged that Newsom’s company, PlumpJack Development Fund, had invested in a partnership called Ecker‑Folsom, which hired Wong. Newsom claimed that he was a passive investor and unaware of the hire at the time, and in 2004 told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had “never used an expediter” in any of his projects in which he was “proactively engaged.”
In 2019, Newsom appointed Tom Girardi, a high-profile trial attorney, to his 111-member Judicial Selection Advisory Committee. Within about a year, Girardi’s unraveling began: he was accused of embezzlement in 2020, disbarred in 2022, and found guilty in 2024 of four counts of wire fraud. The Department of Justice says he embezzled tens of millions of dollars.
It was a spectacular fall from grace for the litigator who claimed once to have dined with President Bill Clinton. Last year, Girardi, now in poor health, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison and ordered to pay more than $2 million in restitution.
Newsom’s office did not offer a responsive answer to a request for comment on Girardi.
In 2021, Governor Newsom appointed Melahat Rafiei, a one-time state Democratic Party official, to the Orange County Fair Board. Four years later, Rafiei was sentenced to six months in jail and fined $10,000 for attempted wire fraud. As part of her plea deal, she reportedly admitted, despite not being charged, that she tried to bribe two local officials “for favorable cannabis legislation.”
Newsom’s office did not offer a responsive answer to a request for comment on Rafiei.
In 2019, Newsom tapped Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas as one of two heads on the governor’s “advisory team” on homelessness.
But in 2021, Ridley-Thomas was forced out of his L.A. position after he was indicted on federal corruption charges. Two years later, he was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison for a bribery and fraud scheme.
In 2010 Newsom appointed Victor Makras to the San Francisco Retirement Board. Three years earlier, Makras’s company had made a legal $5,000 payment at Newsom’s request to fund the mayoral swearing-in ceremony.
More than a decade after that appointment, Makras was convicted of bank fraud and making false statements to a bank. The court slapped him with three years of probation and a $15,200 fine for his role in fraudulently obtaining a $1.3 million loan.
Harlan Kelly Jr., a “high-ranking official” in the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission under Mayor Newsom, was a co-conspirator in that scheme.
In 2024, Kelly was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of bank fraud and other fraud-related charges, which reportedly “grew out of a years-long investigation into bribery and public corruption in San Francisco city government.”
Newsom’s office did not offer a responsive answer to a request for comment on Makras and Kelly.
In 2004, Newsom promoted Rodrigo Santos, a native of Ecuador who became a prolific donor to San Francisco political figures, to serve as the president of the city’s Building Inspection Commission.
Between 2012 and 2019, Santos defrauded clients out of $775,000. In 2023, Santos was sentenced to 30 months in prison for bank fraud, honest services fraud, falsifying records, and tax evasion.
Newsom’s office did not offer a responsive answer to a request for comment on Santos.
From 2004 through 2010, Rudolph Dwayne Jones served as Gavin Newsom’s deputy chief of staff. He functioned in various roles, including as a consultant to groups seeking city contracts.
In 2023, city officials charged Jones with bribery, misappropriation of public funds, and aiding and abetting financial conflicts of interest. Officials reportedly accused Jones of bribing another since-indicted official, Lanita Henriquez, to “steer City contracts and grants towards Jones and the entities he controls.”
Jones and Henriquez have pleaded not guilty and are apparently awaiting trial.
Newsom faces problems of his own. A state ethics body recently fined him for failing promptly to report 36 behested payments — charitable donations made at a government official’s request. The governor has behested millions to his wife’s nonprofit.
We reached out to Newsom’s office for comment. In response, an official accused us of “stitching together decades-old connections to manufacture a make-believe scandal” and suggested that we focus instead on “President Trump’s corruption.”
Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution.Jedd McFatter is a researcher with the Government Accountability Institute and Susan Crabtree is national correspondent at RealClearPolitics; both are coauthors of Fool’s Gold.
