The federal Department of Justice is reportedly investigating California Gov. Gavin Newsom and “First Partner” Jennifer Siebel Newsom but has yet to announce a crime. The focus seems to be Siebel Newsom’s entanglements with various nonprofits that do business with the state, particularly the government education system. While this plays out, the people might recall a similar case under recurring governor Jerry Brown.
In 1975, during his first term, Gov. Brown appointed lawyer-turned-educator Bill Honig to the state Board of Education. In 1983, Honig gained election as state education superintendent, and the self-proclaimed reformer was reelected in 1986 and 1990.
On his third run for president in 1992, Brown accused Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton of sliding state work to the Rose Law firm where his wife Hillary was a partner. Bill Clinton claimed there was nothing to it, and proclaimed Brown unworthy to make such a charge.
In 1993, Bill Honig was convicted on four felony conflict-of-interest charges for approving $337,000 in public money for the Quality Education Project, a nonprofit firm run by Nancy Honig, the superintendent’s wife. Sacramento Judge James L. Long, an appointee of Gov. Jerry Brown, ordered Honig to pay a fine of $337,590, contribute 1,000 hours of community service, and spend four years on probation.
Prosecutors requested that the community service not be performed near children because Honig was an “unfit role model.” The ousted official called the sentence overly harsh, claiming, “If they could have sent me to state prison, they would have.” In 1996, Honig caught a break.
Judge Long reduced the four felony convictions to misdemeanors, which removed from danger Honig’s law license and business license for the family winery. Asked if he accepted responsibility for “these four crimes,” Honig replied “yes, your honor.”
In 2010 Gov. Brown once again appointed Bill Honig to the state Board of Education but the man of conviction withdrew his name. On his way out the door in 2018, Brown pardoned Honig, one of 1332 pardons and 283 commutations the governor issued during his last eight years in office. Brown and Honig are still around at 88 and 89 respectively.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom runs The Representation Project, a nonprofit focused on “intersectional gender stereotypes,” which are “a public health crisis.” The project produces films such as Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In. According to the California Globe, over the past decade the organization has paid Siebel Newsom an annual salary of approximately $150,000 as Chief Creative Officer, and her Girls Club LLC production company has received an estimated $150,000 per year for licensing rights to the documentaries.
In the fiscal year ending March 2024, the nonprofit reported some $1.7 million in gross receipts, with executive compensation, including payments to Siebel Newsom, Girls Club LLC, and staff reaching $581,942. According to the Globe, the DOJ is also scrutinizing “behested payments,” donations solicited by Gov. Newsom to “third-party organizations, often nonprofits or causes aligned with administration priorities.” To critics, it looks like a pay-to-play arrangement.
“Suspicious circumstances have surrounded Newsom and his wife for a long time, making this investigation far from shocking,” notes Ellie Gardey Holmes of The American Spectator. “The fact that a federal probe of Newsom existed during the Biden administration makes this investigation all the more unsurprising. Yet at the same time, actual proof of wrongdoing is something that has so far eluded the public eye.” Other issues are hiding in plain sight.
In April, 2020, Gov. Newsom gave $1 billion to China’s Build Your Dreams (BYD) for masks, which at the time the company did not manufacture. BYD makes electric vehicles and by 2035 the governor wants all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California to be electric, a clear preference for government mandates over the market and consumer choice.
It recently emerged that People’s Republic of China (PRC) nationals play a role in the energy mandates the California Air Resources Board (CARB) imposes on Californians, who pay the highest gasoline prices in the nation. “Behind the Climate Curtain: China’s Hidden Role in California’s Energy Mandates and University Partnerships,” a new study from the National Association of Scholars, recommends amendments and expansions to the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
Those who act as agents of the PRC should be made to register as such. Congress might look into it as investigation of the Newsoms proceeds. In fairness to the governor, for the new span of the Bay Bridge, California hired China’s state-owned Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries, (ZPMC), which at the time had never built a single bridge.
The project came in 10 years late, $5 billion over budget and riddled cracked welds, broken bolts, corrosion and other safety issues. That prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to respond, “I mean, look, shit happens.” According to the United States Geological Survey, a major quake is due in the Bay Area before 2032.
Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.
