…and using his wife’s non-profits as a political slush fund
Governor Gavin Newsom “used his office to try to block a small tribe from opening a casino in Northern California, after taking nearly $2 million from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a major California political donor which operates its own gambling compound just 15 miles away from its rival’s proposed site, which broke ground on a $1 billion expansion in 2023,” the Washington Free Beacon reported in July.
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Known as “behested” payments, this isn’t the Governor’s first rodeo. He accepted more than $700,000 from two major law firms in 2021 to both create and defend his Executive Order to repeal death penalty rules and dismantle the death chamber at San Quentin, James Lacy reported.
Gov. Gavin Newsom “behested” $3.5 million in 2018, the year he was elected governor. In 2019, he reported behested payments totaling $12.1 million, the Orange County Register reported in “Behested payments and the specter of corruption.”
But wait! There’s more.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and when the governor’s emergency powers were greatly expanded, payments to various entities – at Newsom’s “behest” – shot up to a whopping $226 million, according to data from the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), Fox News reported:
$45 million from Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente for his housing initiative – and then the governor chose both Blue Shield and Kaiser Permanente to help manage vaccine distribution in California.
Between 2018 and 2019, UnitedHealth donated $220,000 to political committees controlled by Newsom, who later awarded $492 million in contracts to UnitedHealth subsidiaries in no-bid and expedited situations.
There is a lot more, but you get the point.
The Free Beacon continues:
“In April 2024, a few months before Newsom sent his letter to the Biden Interior Department, the Democratic governor requested Graton Rancheria to contribute $500,000 to his wife’s charity, the California Partners Project. And in April 2025, one month before Newsom filed his lawsuit against the Trump administration, he again asked Graton Rancheria to contribute another $500,000 to his wife’s charity. The tribe cut those checks specifically at Newsom’s request, according to California’s “behested payments” database, which discloses whenever state elected officials request others to make donations on their behalf.
While the data doesn’t show an explicit quid pro quo between Newsom and Graton Rancheria, several ethics experts told the Washington Free Beacon that Newsom’s charitable solicitations from the tribe to his wife’s charity just before he used the powers of his office to try to block its rival from opening a competing casino raises major red flags.”
Siebel Newsom’s California Partners Project “champions gender equity across the state and ensures our states media and technology industries are a force for good in the lives of all children.”
Siebel Newsom has another charity, “The Representation Project,” in which she produces “Gender Justice” films and sells them to California’s public schools.
“California Governor Gavin Newsom helped bankroll his wife’s charity with nearly $2million he solicited from a Native American tribe – while fighting on its behalf to kill a rival casino,” The Daily Mail reported this week.
“Now the governor’s office has reacted angrily to questions Daily Mail asked about the payments, called it ‘insulting and offensive’ to even be asked whether his official actions on behalf on the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (FIGR) amount to a quid-pro-quo. Records show that the governor personally requested the ‘behest payments’ from FIGR.”
“The Bay Area tribe donated $1.8million to The California Partners Project, a nonprofit co-founded by Newsom’s wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and another $450,000 to fund his inaugurations.
Newsom and the state then joined the tribe’s efforts to block a casino from opening just 15 miles from theirs, filing a lawsuit in May challenging the federal government’s approval of the project.”
Records show that from 2018 to 2024, the California governor solicited a total of $2.25million from the FIGR – with the majority going to Jennifer’s charity, the Daily Mail said.
This is pay-to-play politics, or legally known as “quid pro quo”, Latin meaning “something for something.”
While the citizens of the state were locked down under Gov. Newsom’s covid orders, Gavin Newsom and the Legislature also slithered a bill through committees in 2020 to ratify separate tribal-state gaming compacts between the State of California and six California tribes. SB 869, the Tribal gaming: compact ratification for:
- the Ione Band of Miwok Indians
- the Mooretown Rancheria of Maidu Indians of California
- the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians
- the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians
- the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation
- the Tule River Indian Tribe
The compacts authorized the Tribes to engage in Class III Gaming, which governs most slots and casino table games like Random Number Generator slots, blackjack, craps and roulette.
The governor and legislature also exempted the six tribes from the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA, which identifies environmental impact reports on construction projects, was well as mitigation measures, such as increased traffic, excessive road use, noise, etc…
SB 869 (Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa), ratified in 2020 the tribal-state gaming compacts entered into between the State of California and the above-named tribes. “The bill provides that, in deference to tribal sovereignty, certain actions related to these compacts and amended compacts are not projects for purposes of the California Environmental Quality Act.”
The bill also authorized the Governor, under the California Constitution, to negotiate and conclude compacts, subject to ratification by the Legislature.
This brings us to a lawsuit filed in March, which the Globe reported on, and states, “The Ione Band of Miwok Indians is not on any of the four lists of historically recognized Indian tribes composed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) after the adoption of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA).” The lawsuit challenges federal government actions on behalf of the Ione Band of Miwok Indians:
As the lawsuit states, “Defendant Bureau of Indian Affairs and Laverdure, based on the Indian trust, unlawfully reached the May 24, 2012 ROD conclusion that the Ione Band was eligible, as a “federally recognized tribe” under federal jurisdiction in 1934, to have the Secretary “acquire 228.04 acres of land into trust for” its benefit under Section 5 of the IRA.”
CHUCKLE……
And you wonder why the middle class and small business owners are closing their doors?
High Density Infill is choking the life out of livability in Calif. and who are getting the profits? Look at the larger construction companies and development companies.
It is the old game of follow the money. Slick has become a blatant solisiter of money Just look at the deals around the new house he bought and at the same time his daughter gets a bunch of money.
But then again San Fran Nan has properly schooled Slick how to get money…. OH is this anything like the Biden cartel who have been doing this for decades??????
If you are a Dem. when do you get sick of this corruption?
This is so corrupt. Nancy Honig and Bill Honig must be really frosted that they were prosecuted for the same stuff Newsom and his money grubbing wife are doing now. Newsom is not so bright, so I wonder who is running this graft operation?
Correction, our beloved governor didn’t ‘buy’ that mansion, by some very interesting financial sleight of hand it was ‘just there’. He didn’t put out a penny. It was noted here on the pages of CAPoliticalreview if I”m not mistaken.