A Democratic insider embedded in Gov. Gavin Newsom's political orbit began secretly recording conversations for the FBI in June 2024, more than six months before Donald Trump returned to the White House, undercutting Newsom's public claim that the federal investigation targeting his circle is a Trump-directed vendetta.
The timeline is not ambiguous. Alexis Podesta, a 45-year-old longtime Democratic operative, wore an FBI wire as far back as June 2024, the New York Post reported, citing McGregor Scott, the attorney for Newsom's former chief of staff Dana Williamson. At that point, Joe Biden was president. Biden's appointees ran the Department of Justice. Biden's FBI director oversaw the bureau.
Yet when Newsom addressed the investigation publicly in mid-June 2026, he pointed the finger squarely at Trump.
Newsom framed the probe as political retaliation. His statement, reported by Breitbart, laid out his theory in plain terms:
"Federal agents have knocked on the doors of family, friends, and former employees, not because they found a crime, but because they're simply trying to find one. They're demanding records. They're abusing the grand jury process, digging through years and years of random documents."
He went further, casting himself as a target of personal spite:
"Donald Trump isn't just coming after me because of my mean tweets. He's coming after me because I'm considering running for president, because he hates that I've consistently called him out over and over again for his lies and deceit."
It is a tidy narrative. A governor who stood up to a powerful president. A weaponized DOJ. An abuse of power. There is just one problem: the facts do not support it.
The FBI wire operation began during the Biden presidency. The surveillance net that swept up Sacramento's political class, insiders and lobbyists who received FBI letters last fall informing them their phone calls had been intercepted, was cast while Biden's Justice Department was still calling the shots.
This is not a case of agents fishing and coming up empty. Dana Williamson, 53, who served as Newsom's chief of staff, pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and making false statements to the FBI. Those are serious federal charges, not political theater.
The scheme, as Newsmax reported, allegedly siphoned roughly $225,000 from a dormant campaign account belonging to former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. Federal investigators have spent the past year examining Newsom, members of his staff, and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom's taxes.
Williamson's attorney, McGregor Scott, himself a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, confirmed the wire arrangement plainly: "Alexis wore a wire, and Dana did not."
The fact that a Democratic insider cooperated with the FBI to record conversations inside Newsom's political circle tells its own story. Podesta was not some outside informant. She was part of the governor's orbit, a world where donors scored coveted state appointments after writing big checks to Newsom-aligned PACs and his wife's nonprofit.
What began as a probe into Williamson has expanded. The FBI letters sent to Sacramento political insiders last fall rattled the capital's lobbying community. Many of the recipients had no direct connection to Williamson, the New York Post reported, suggesting investigators were casting a wider net across Newsom's inner circle.
Republican Assemblymember Josh Hoover of Folsom captured the mood in Sacramento bluntly: "All of this stuff just raises so many questions. What is going on in this administration? What types of conversations are being had?"
Those are fair questions. When a governor's chief of staff pleads guilty to federal fraud, when a political ally wears a wire for the FBI, when investigators examine the governor's own taxes and those of his wife, the public deserves straight answers, not deflection.
The investigation reportedly originated from whistleblower tips, not from a political directive. That detail matters. Whistleblowers go to the FBI when they believe something is wrong. The FBI opened the case. Biden's FBI.
Newsom's instinct to blame Trump fits a familiar pattern. When accountability arrives, find a villain. When the facts are inconvenient, change the subject. When a federal investigation closes in, call it persecution.
But the calendar does not lie. June 2024 was Biden's America. Biden's attorney general oversaw the DOJ. Biden's FBI director ran the bureau. Trump was a candidate, not a president. He had no authority over federal law enforcement.
The governor's suggestion that Trump "abused the grand jury process" collapses under the weight of a guilty plea from his own chief of staff. Grand juries do not return indictments that lead to guilty pleas in cases built on nothing. Williamson admitted to conspiracy, fraud, false tax filings, and lying to federal agents. That is not a political hit job. That is a criminal case with a cooperating witness, intercepted phone calls, and a defendant who folded.
Newsom's governance record in California has drawn scrutiny on multiple fronts, from a billion dollars funneled to activist groups for migrant services to the pay-to-play questions that have dogged his administration for years. The federal probe now adds a criminal dimension to what was already a record of questionable stewardship.
Meanwhile, the dormant campaign account at the center of the fraud scheme belonged to Xavier Becerra, who went on to serve as Biden's HHS Secretary. That connection has drawn its own political fallout. Becerra has faced bipartisan fire as aides pleaded guilty in the campaign theft scheme, raising questions about oversight of political funds in California's Democratic establishment.
Newsom has openly floated a 2028 presidential run. His statement about the investigation doubled as a campaign pitch, the brave governor standing up to a bully president. It is a posture designed for fundraising emails and cable news hits.
But a presidential candidate whose former chief of staff just pleaded guilty to federal fraud, whose political ally wore a wire for the FBI, and whose own taxes are under federal examination has a credibility problem that no amount of Trump-blaming can fix.
The investigation's origins under Biden also create an awkward dynamic for Democrats. If the probe was legitimate enough for Biden's DOJ to open, it is legitimate enough for Trump's DOJ to continue. You cannot celebrate the independence of federal law enforcement when your party controls it and then cry persecution the moment the other party takes over.
Newsom has not addressed the timeline discrepancy. He has not explained how Trump directed an investigation that began eighteen months before Trump took office. He has not accounted for the guilty plea, the wire, or the intercepted calls. He has offered a political narrative where the public needs factual answers.
The questions raised by Newsom's political associations and the culture of his administration are not going away. They are compounding. Every new revelation, the wire, the plea, the expanding scope, makes the governor's persecution narrative harder to sustain.
Several questions hang over this case. What specific role, if any, did Newsom play in the financial transactions under investigation? What did the wiretapped conversations reveal? How far does the probe extend beyond Williamson? And why has Newsom chosen to attack the investigation's legitimacy rather than cooperate publicly?
No official DOJ or FBI statement on the investigation's origins, whether it was initiated under Biden or expanded under Trump, has surfaced in public reporting. That silence cuts both ways, but it does nothing to support Newsom's claim that Trump manufactured the probe from scratch.
The evidence that exists points in one direction. The wire started under Biden. The guilty plea is real. The scope is growing. And the governor's defense amounts to: ignore all of that and blame the other guy.
When the facts are on your side, you talk about the facts. When they're not, you talk about Donald Trump.