Why Newsom Is More Terrified of the DOJ Investigation Than He Wants to Admit

California Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to get ahead of the Department of Justice investigations of himself and his wife this week when he delivered a press conference in which he claimed it was all just a political hit job by President Donald Trump.

Trump, Newsom claimed, is “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.”

According to anonymous sources familiar with the investigation who have spoken with ABC News, CNN, and the Sacramento Bee, one DOJ probe concerns the taxes of Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. (RELATED: Newsom Ties Himself to Hunter Biden)

Newsom, in acknowledging that the Department of Justice is investigating his wife, portrayed this as a new low in an intimidation game.

“If they can’t intimidate me, they’ll go after the mother of our children,” he said.

Behind the scenes, Newsom is much more nervous than he would have you believe. That’s because the circumstances surrounding his wife’s nonprofit, the Representation Project, are decidedly ethically sketchy.

Over the past decade, the Representation Project has paid Siebel roughly $150,000 annually to be its chief creative officer. At the same time, the nonprofit’s primary function is promoting her films, which are owned by Siebel Newsom’s LLC, Girls Club Entertainment. Additionally, the nonprofit provides funding to that LLC for Siebel Newsom to make new films. In 2024, for example, the Representation Project paid Girls Club Entertainment $161,250 for film production work. This means that Siebel Newsom triply benefits from her nonprofit: it pays her a salary, it markets her films tax-free, and it financially supports her LLC.

In March, the Daily Mail totaled that Siebel Newsom and her production company had received $3.7 million from her nonprofit. Of that, $1.8 million consisted of her salary, which was paid out over a decade-long period, and $2.1 million of it was paid to her for-profit production company.

The Representation Project is clear that its central purpose is promoting films made by Siebel Newsom. The front page of the Representation Project’s website displays the tagline “Fighting sexism with social impact films” beneath a graphic displaying the film posters of five documentaries directed by Siebel Newsom. Throughout its website and materials, the nonprofit to Siebel Newsom’s films, which are owned by her LLC, as “our films,” potentially giving donors the impression that these are films owned and produced by the nonprofit rather than by a separate for-profit organization.

On its “About” page, the Representation Project further makes it sound like it owns and produces the films:

Millions of people have been touched by our storytelling and reached by our activism and resources. Jennifer Siebel Newsom founded The Representation Project in 2011 with her groundbreaking film Miss Representation, igniting a national conversation about sexism in the media. The Mask You Live In, Jennifer’s second documentary, showcased how harmful American masculinity can be for boys and young men.

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The Representation Project sells licenses to screen Siebel Newsom’s documentaries on its website. No other means of purchasing the screening rights to the film appear to be publicly marketed. It costs $99 for a teacher to stream one of these films in his or her classroom. A corporate screening license, meanwhile, costs $1,500 and can be purchased on the Representation Project’s website. A “Customized Pre-recorded Director’s Welcome” costs an additional $1,000.

The ethical problems get much worse when incorporating the fact that Siebel Newsom is the wife of a sitting governor.

In 2021, the San Francisco Bee found that more than $800,000 had been donated to the Representation Project by companies hoping for favorable treatment from the California state government, including PG&E, AT&T, and Kaiser Permanente.

It’s the perfect formula to make money from a nonprofit: Leverage your position as the wife of the governor to get donations. Then, use those donations to fund your salary and your for-profit film production company.

There’s yet another ethical problem that has emerged with regard to Siebel Newsom’s position as “First Partner.” The then-director of the California Association of School Counselors stated proudly and publicly that Siebel Newsom’s efforts as “First Partner” to win more state funding for school counselors would result in more schools licensing her films.

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Whistleblowers believed that there was something going on here that was serious enough to rise to the level of criminal misbehavior. The Justice Department saw fit to act by interviewing witnesses, issuing grand jury subpoenas, and obtaining financial documents.

What exactly the Department of Justice believes could be criminal here, we do not know. We know with certainty, however, that your average government ethicist would not recommend that the wife of a sitting governor run such a charity.

There’s much that could be going on here, and Gov. Newsom is probably hoping that we don’t find out about it.

Ellie Gardey Holmes is the author of Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power.