An official in Gavin Newsom’s inner circle was wearing a wire to secretly record conversations during a criminal probe into his then chief of staff.
That according to a California Post report exploring the investigation of former chief of staff Dana Williamson, who pleaded guilty to federal fraud and tax charges in May, as well as a federal probe reportedly currently underway into Newsom and his wife.
“The FBI had a mole inside Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political orbit before the agency’s corruption probe expanded into the governor and his wife,” the Post reported.
Democrat insider Alexis Podesta, 45, secretly recorded conversations during the criminal probe into Williamson, according to Williamson’s attorney, the Post wrote.
The discovery that she was wired as far back as June 2024 explains why a number of Sacramento political insiders and lobbyists received letters from the FBI informing them that their phone calls had been intercepted in connection with the probe.
“Alexis wore a wire, and Dana did not,” McGregor Scott, Williamson’s lawyer and a former US attorney for the Eastern District of California, told the Post.
It’s not been reported whether Podesta’s wire picked up anything that incriminated the governor himself.
The Eastern District is now investigating the Newsoms, for which the California governor has accused President Donald Trump of “coming after” him for considering a presidential run.
As Breitbart News reported last month, sources say that the investigation “has been ongoing since 2025” and that it is “based on whistleblower complaints” related to the Newsom’s personal finances.
In March, a Daily Mail report revealed that the governor’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, had allegedly pocketed over $3 million of income from her charity, The Representation Project, for herself and her company, Girls Club LLC, “over the past decade.”
Sources familiar with the recent investigation told the Post that investigators have “spend the past year digging into not only Newsom, but also his staff and his wife’s taxes.”
Last year Trump said Newsom should be arrested for his mishandling of illegal immigration and three nights of riots over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, a comment the governor called an “unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.”
Republican assembly member Josh Hoover told the Post he received one of the FBI letters in connection with the Williamson probe though he had never spoken with either Williamson or Podesta.
“A lot of people received letters essentially informing us that there were certain periods of time where the FBI was given access to follow phone calls,” Hoover said. “I don’t know how these investigations work, but it sounds like they cast a pretty broad net across the Capitol community to see what they could find.”
A source told the Post that the letters were likely in connection with calls being recorded involving Podesta.
Williamson has declined to cooperate with the feds because, she said, she did not have information on Newsom, her attorney told the Post.
Podesta is currently on the California’s State Compensation Insurance Fund board at an annual salary of nearly $61,000 since Newsom appointed her to the job in 2020. She has held several positions in previous administrations and also worked for Disney and the late Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA).
Podesta has not been charged with a crime.
Williamson pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return and making false statements to the FBI.
Williamson was Newsom’s top aide in 2022 and 2024.
Federal prosecutors alleged Williamson and others hatched a plan to funnel some $225,000 from a dormant campaign account belonging to former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to Becerra’s chief of staff Sean McCluskie for personal use.
Becerra is now the Democrat frontrunner to succeed Newsom as governor.
Podesta “inherited responsibility for overseeing Becerra’s dormant campaign account” from Williamson and did not know that $10,000 monthly payments as consulting fees to McCluskie were improper, her attorney has said.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
