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Newsom’s Ticking Time Bomb: Dana Williamson
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is riding a wave of media adoration and has frontrunner status. Yet it could all come crashing down if the scandal surrounding his chief of staff from 2023–2024 blows up in his face.
Dana Williamson, who stood at the very top of Newsom’s organizational chart, faced an investigation under the Biden administration that led to her being indicted in November 2025 for a slew of charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire fraud, falsifying her tax returns, and obstruction of justice.
Williamson was alleged to have helped funnel money from an inactive political campaign account to Sean McCluskie, the chief of staff of the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. Notably, the state of California received numerous advantages from HHS during this period, including control over the dispersal of Medicaid waivers, which the Newsom administration used to direct Medicaid funds toward non-medical payments, including funding for housing and food support.
Here we have the appearance of impropriety cast over the federal government’s relationship with the government of California.
But this scandal could entrap Newsom even more than just by creating the impression that his administration is corrupt. Dana Williamson’s lawyer has alleged that Newsom himself was also a target of the Department of Justice’s investigation under the Biden administration.
In fact, Williamson’s lawyer, McGregor Scott, has alleged that Williamson was approached by federal authorities who, in his words, asked if she could “help in some sort of investigation they were conducting of the governor,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. This makes it sound as though federal investigators’ first interaction with Williamson was asking if she would be willing to rat out the governor to save herself prison time.
The Los Angeles Times was able to confirm, by means of another source “with knowledge of the case,” that federal investigators had “tried to pressure Williamson into implicating Newsom.” This is a strong statement, one that comes across as implying that federal investigators under Biden believed that Newsom could be involved.
Of course, this all raises the question: Would the Biden administration’s DOJ really have carried out investigative work into Newsom himself, and even inquired of Williamson about his role in her lawbreaking, if it thought there was nothing there? It seems like there must have been something there that led them to make Newsom a subject of their investigation — unless they were corrupt, or deeply mistaken.
Newsom’s administration, for its part, has denied that he was a subject of the investigation. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, has merely commented that the investigation remains ongoing.
This all seems an unbelievable situation that raises an infinite number of questions. Gavin Newsom was one of President Joe Biden’s most absolutely loyal surrogates, the governor of the nation’s largest and richest state, and one of the most powerful Democrats in the country. It would be shocking to find out that Biden’s own DOJ had deemed it necessary, as Dana Williamson’s lawyer has alleged, to make Newsom himself part of its investigation. And yet we have California’s paper of record, the Los Angeles Times, claiming that it has confirmed that federal investigators sought to get Williamson to implicate Newsom.
It is very much possible that, as this case proceeds, we will learn more about why Newsom may have been a target of the investigation. That is one enormous scandal to have hanging over your head right as you are preparing to formally launch your presidential campaign.
Unfortunately for Newsom, court proceedings in his former chief-of-staff’s corruption case will be happening at the worst possible time for the launch of his presidential campaign. Earlier this month was supposed to be a hearing for setting the timeline for Williamson’s case and a possible trial date. But the hearing was delayed until April because Williamson, around age 53, had just undergone a successful liver transplant.
Given the complicated nature of her case, this thing is going to stretch for a long time, likely well into next year, if not longer. Right now, Williamson seems intent upon going to trial and proclaiming her innocence, even as two of her alleged co-conspirators have already pleaded guilty. A very public trial of Newsom’s former chief of staff during the first year of his presidential campaign, which will likely begin next year, would be a spectacle of abject embarrassment for Newsom. Media coverage would be constant.
And it’s not as though this is Newsom’s chief of staff from 15 or 20 years ago. This is his chief of staff from November 2024, who only stepped down because of the federal investigation that was ensnaring her.
It really gets worse for Newsom because there are even more aspects of the indictment that seem to implicate him and his administration.
Specifically, the indictment alleges that Williamson lied to investigators by denying that she had shared internal California government information about a California lawsuit against a major video game company. Numerous media outlets have reported that the details in the indictment match those of the state’s discrimination and sexual harassment case against Activision Blizzard.
Williamson was previously a paid adviser for Activision. In November 2023, the state of California reached a settlement in its lawsuit against Activision for $54 million — well short of what experts had been predicting. The California Civil Rights Department had estimated that Activision’s liability was close to $1 billion. The settlement was seen as a major victory for the company, who had narrowly evaded a terribly high judgment. And, shockingly, a whistleblower in the California government had alleged in 2022 that the governor’s office “began to interfere” in the lawsuit against Activision and was “mimicking the interests of Activision’s counsel.” After that whistleblower filed a public records request seeking information on Williamson’s impact on the case’s outcome, Williamson allegedly told one of her co-conspirators, “I was like I am f**ked if I have to produce all of that. I talk to those assholes all the time.” (READ MORE: Arrest of Newsom’s Ex-Chief of Staff Prompts Allegations of Misconduct Within the Governor’s Office)
This leaves the public with the impression that there was indeed impropriety within the governor’s office connected to the Activision case. After all, the former chief of staff has now been accused of lying about the lawsuit. This should be particularly sensitive for Democratic primary voters, given that this lawsuit was about discrimination and sexual harassment at the company, issues they are especially focused on.
There is, of course, also the fact that the indictment leaves the impression that Newsom’s former chief of staff is a woman who had no limits on her law-breaking. She wrote off a $156,302 trip to Mexico, $12,437 Chanel earrings, a Fendi purse, and more, allegedly stealing more than $160,000 in taxpayer dollars in total.
This is what everyone is going to be talking about when Newsom begins his presidential run, and it could, quite easily, cause things to go south for him.
READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes:
The Disturbing Doctor Touring the Country to Promote Her Career of Third-Trimester Abortions
Gavin Newsom Will Regret His Book Launch
The Women Who Will Haunt Gavin Newsom’s Presidential Campaign
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