← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bork. And I am joined by the great, the one and only Chris Catalago, executive editor. I just want to make sure I get that right. Executive editor for all of California for Politico.
- [00:15]
B
That's right. You got it. You nailed it. First time, first take, first take.
- [00:18]
A
Stein. That's what they call me. We're here to talk about Gavin Newsom, who apparently is being investigated by the Trump doj. In a sort of interesting twist, Newsom ran out the information as opposed to the doj. I guess that's like the new common thing for a Democrat is to quickly move ahead of the ball and get the news coverage on your terms as opposed to their terms. But there's a lot of unknowns right now. So we're recording this at like 3, 4:50pm on Eastern Standard Time. But, Chris, what do you know that you can tell us?
- [00:47]
B
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple ways to look at this. One is at least the way Newsom's looking at it, which is there is no knowns to know. Right. There is zero, from his perspective, legitimacy to this. And, and he is starting off from that standpoint. He has put the story out essentially himself, gotten ahead of the news, as you said. He has experience doing this. Like, right. He's been, they've tried to recall him twice. He faced this sort of barrage of Elon Trump, everybody else attacks just as fires were hitting Southern California. Like, this is Newsom's playbook, is to just come right back at it and say, like, this is as big a political witch hunt as you can get, and that none of the details here matter. This is a political stunt, basically. And we've seen Democrats fairly recently. I mean, look at Mark Kelly. You fight these things, you can really, really benefit. Obviously, there's sort of an obsession on Trump's part with Newsom. It recurs, it comes back, it recedes. In terms of the details here, obviously, it seems to involve the First Partner, which is the term they call the first lady in California. And she is a filmmaker. She's made a number of movies. She has a nonprofit in the state, California. Not to sort of get ahead of things, but California has something called behested payments, where outside groups, this has happened governors in more. Basically, you can make a contribution on behalf of an individual to a group. That is something that's gotten heavy traction. Been written a lot about the finances of the first partners nonprofit in conservative media in the New York Post and these other things. And so from the Newsom perspective, basically the Trump administration has taken a sort of right wing meme, a storyline in conservative media and sort of brought that, mainstreamed it by launching an investigation with no merit. And that is their sort of, you know, first, second and third point here. Yeah, or that is the point of the Newsom side.
- [03:04]
A
Let's read from the Times. The New York Times got the story, or I should say probably handed the story first. We're gonna read from the Times and then we'll get to the video that Newsom put out. But this is around what they, this is just to give people a sense of what going on here, like what the crux of this might be. Several people associated with the news, with the Newsoms have been contacted by federal agents the past week, according to the governor's office. Mr. Newsom's aides believe the agents have also subpoenaed banking records, but said they have seen no written evidence of that. Chris, this is to your point, you're very Donald Rumsfeldine. The known knowns and the unknown knowns. Ms. Siebel Newsome, who calls herself California's first partner, is a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on special impacts of sexism. She founded a nonprofit organization called the Representation Project that advocates for gender equity in part by developing educational materials based on Ms. Cybel. Newsom's documentaries. Also owns a film production company called Girls Club Entertainment. It is listed as a contractor of the Representation Project on the non profits tax returns. Tax records show that the Representation Project makes annual payments to Girls Club Entertainment 2020 for the non profit paid Girls Club Entertainment 161,250 for film production work. So the allegations, and this is Sam speaking now, more or less, are like, oh my God, this is insider dealing. They're like taking non profit money and they're shuffling it to her film production company and it's just a misuse of funds. This is like the generous interpretation of why they would do an investigation. The very un, non generous, but probably also, you know, seeped in logic, explanations that Newsom's an enemy of Trump and he's a 2028 Democrat and Trump launches these. The Trump DOJ has launched these investigations on a number of different people. And you just can't sort of remove that context from this either.
- [04:47]
B
Yeah, I wonder how many other 2028 prospective candidates are sitting there going, please, Mr. President, investigate me, investigate me. Is there any more rocket fuel than you can get? And I don't mean to sort of skip past all of these details. Obviously we are working on all kinds of tracks here at Politico. Right. You try to run down as much as you can about the investigation, but the sort of the political story here is so obvious, which is Newsom is a top Democrat. And you know, the timing here with Blanche and the fact that the DOJ that folks around Newsom I think have told us already this started to heat up. People started to hear from, from folks in the federal government sort of last week and that was just around the
- [05:36]
A
time they think it's the Blanche stuff that Blanche is getting in there or is being nominated, needs to show off.
- [05:42]
B
I mean, I think they think that the timing is not that there's something to the timing here with Blanche is what we've heard directly on the Newsom side of things. Now there is a, it does seem to me that folks within the administration, within the White House have clearly tried to get out there this idea that this investigation had been initiated locally. So in la, somewhere in California, that is something that folks around the Governor are saying is very much in dispute. Right? They're saying, well, sure, the White House might be saying that the administration might be saying that we have reason to believe that this was initiated, you know, if not in Washington at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and that this is purely political.
- [06:25]
A
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- [08:36]
C
In recent days, federal agents have knocked on the doors of family, friends, and former employees not because they found a crime, 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. 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. Donald Trump is simply the most corrupt president in American history.
- [09:16]
A
All right, well, tell us a little bit about the sort of on again, off again, weirdly flirtatious, yet very adversarial relationship between Trump and Newsom.
- [09:25]
B
Yeah, so I think in the first Trump administration, there was kind of a bit of a back and forth tit for tat. There was some amusement in those meetings. Toward the end of Trump's first term, there was some disasters in California. I've sat down and talked with Newsom pretty extensively about this. And, you know, Trump was getting on the phone with the governor at the time and saying, like, we need to make a deal about these things. You know, this is where the disaster aid, tit for tat, back and forth negotiation kind of started. And I think things really seem to take a turn at that point. Then you had Trump, you know, Newsom go out be a top surrogate for Biden. There was the Whole question when Biden stepped away, whether there was going to be some kind of, like, snap primary in that moment for Democrats. There obviously wasn't. Harris became the nominee. And then Newsom started to sound sort of a different tone right after Trump won, which was like, I'll work with anybody, but, like, you know, our guard is up. And then very quickly after that, you had, like, the fire start. You had Trump kind of go after Newsom in what sounded to be almost like a new way, at least publicly before it had been, you know, he said he wanted to do. He was only going to give California fire aid. This is, like, hours after the fire if California instituted voter id, right? There were just these things Trump was saying that had, like, nothing to do with disaster aid. And then you had this whole idea that, like, Newsom was to blame for these fires, that California, you know, should. Should sort of suffer for it because it was California's fault. And then. And then just a number of storylines where things started to take a much more personal turn. I think they still, you know, things do feel different. Like, they would have these public spats and then they would go, like, meet and talk about things. You had Trump send the Marine, you know, send the military and the Marines into LA and sort of, you know, militarize Gavin Newsom state, which is another inflection point here. So there's just been all these moments that have frayed, an already, like, you know, very sort of delicate balance between them. And now I think it's sort of all bets are off at this point. I don't. I mean, there's obviously performance, formative aspects to this as well, but, like, you have, like, Newsom going to Davos and trolling Trump. You have this kind of back and forth where there's a real kind of political wwe, like, world here, but then there's also a very, like, you have to ask yourself, like, is the Democratic nominee for president in 2028 going to be, like, campaigning from jail or prison at that point? Right. Like, I mean, they're just. There are these scenarios now where I think it's kind of we can't do things. And this would be very much the Newsom perspective. Like, the whole world has changed. We have to operate in a completely different way. And I think that is, like, part of what you're seeing here is, you know, the traditional media will run paragraphs like you read from the New York Times, which, you know, put together the facts. But, like, in, again, I hate to keep putting this on Newsom, but this is our Reporting, like, even in the way you read it, like, might sort of legitimize the idea here that there are things to investigate when Newsom is basically, and his wife are basically saying, like, there is nothing here to investigate. So, like, you can bring up all the sort of nonprofits or all the things that the New York Post and others have written about before, but, like, there's nothing to see here. This is political.
- [13:11]
A
Well, let me just, like, since you're at Politico and you, and I know you got to be a straight newsman about this, but I do think there's like, some context that I think is worth actually considering. Yes, we have to dispense with this reality. John Bolton did plead guilty, and everyone initially thought that the Bolton indictment was a, was just like this, a sort of revenge plot from the DOJ to go after a Trump critic, when in reality it mishandled classified information. So that is true 100%. But the preponderance of cases that the DOJ has brought against perceived Trump opponents since Trump 2.0 began have been flimsy at best. You know, Lisa Cook, James Comey, Adam Schiff, some of these, you know, mortgage fraud things, the Mark Kelly one that you talked about where the crime in this case was saying that service members don't have to commit unconstitutional acts. I mean, these are very vindictive efforts to weaponize the Justice Department, ironically, because they're doing this whole anti. Weaponization against Trump opponents. And so in that context, combined with what you referenced above, the, the Blanch nomination hearings coming and Blanch needing to impress Trump, you just can't, like, remove that from the equation. That is the equation. That is what's happening here. And it has to be considered it. I don't know what, I don't know could turn out that, you know, Gavin Newsom's wife did something corrupt. But that doesn't remove the context here. And I will note she has put out a statement as well, saying there are clearly no boundaries to what Donald Trump will do to get his way or to challenge those who get in his way. This is not presidential behavior. And the governor, I will continue to speak truth to power because the American people deserve so much more. So, yeah, that's my spiel. I don't know if I, if you disagree with any of it.
- [14:57]
B
I mean, the one, the one bit of context I would add here is there was a former chief of staff. Oh, yeah, tell us about that because
- [15:04]
A
that's, that's in the piece, too.
- [15:06]
B
Yeah. So this former chief of staff to Gavin Newsom has been accused of a number of crimes around campaign finance and had been working at the time as an advisor to Javier Becerra, the incoming governor, but then went on to work for Gavin Newsom and was under a tremendous amount of legal scrutiny and pressure, and still is, frankly, because we don't know what the sentencing around that will be. And basically the thought was at the time that if someone were to have information on the Newsoms, on Gavin Newsom that, you know very well have, would have probably should have come out as a, as a part of that investigation and as a part of the. It being, you know, dealt with in the court, adjudicated in the court, and the last sort of paperwork that came out there, not only did nothing come out about Becerra, which was the big question, which was, is she going to roll on Becerra essentially, but really, you know, less than nothing about Newsom, and that they said that this was the totality of what they gathered from that investigation. And so basically, long story short, like, that just happened with someone who was very close to the governor, that involved the feds. And nothing about anything involving the first partner has surfaced so far. I do think that's worth pointing out there.
- [16:45]
A
And there's other. And this is in the Times piece, too. So the chief of staff's name is Dana Williamson. There's an interesting nugget in here at the bottom of the piece that says when Ms. Williamson was indicted last year, her attorney said that federal agents first approached her during the Biden administration. She was working for Mr. Newsom at the time, and the agents asked her if she would cooperate in an investigation of the governor. She replied that she had no information to give them because she had never witnessed any criminal conduct by Mr. Newsom. So just to be clear about this, definitely some corruption involving the former chief of staff that has been litigated. The chief of staff pleaded guilty last month to three felonies, but she was approached by the Biden administration, and the Biden administration was the one who asked her about whether there was any dirt on Newsom, and she said no. So, I mean, it's just like the contrast is, is pretty stark there, right? It's like the Democratic president's DOJ trying to dig up some dirt on the California Democratic governor, and there wasn't anything there at that time. So. But here we are now, where the Trump DOJ is now looking into this as well. All right, Chris, my, my man. I appreciate you. It's so good to reconnect.
- [17:56]
B
We should do this more often. Yeah, I know.
- [17:58]
A
You're just. You're too far out west.
- [18:00]
B
Anytime.
- [18:00]
A
The time difference, it's too much. I can't handle it. Maybe it's too hard for you.
- [18:04]
B
Well, I'm. I'm here to bust all the. The east coast bias that permeates your.
- [18:10]
A
All right. Over, under, over, under. How much does Newsom raise off of this in the next 24 hours? I'm gonna set it at.
- [18:17]
B
I'm gonna say 10 million. 10 million.
- [18:21]
A
10 million. And 24 now.
- [18:22]
B
Depends how. He's not going to. I mean, he's not going to put out a solicitor.
- [18:26]
A
You don't put a.
- [18:27]
B
Well, I shouldn't say that. I mean, I shouldn't say he'll do it, like, on behalf of some.
- [18:33]
A
Yeah.
- [18:34]
B
Group or Democrats writ large or Dems in the midterms or. Right. Talarico or somebody in this time. As if he needs it. Yeah, he needs more national Dems showering him with money. All right.
- [18:50]
A
Chris Catalogo, executive director extraordinaire and president of Politico at California, some title like that. Whatever it is, everyone should follow him. He's the man out west. Take care, buddy.
- [19:00]
B
Thanks, man.