A Democratic insider in Gavin Newsom's political orbit secretly recorded conversations while wearing an FBI wire as far back as June 2024, according to the attorney for the governor's former chief of staff, a disclosure that deepens the federal cloud hanging over California's governor and his inner circle.
Alexis Podesta, a 45-year-old Newsom appointee with deep roots in Sacramento Democratic politics, carried out the covert recordings as part of a criminal probe targeting Dana Williamson, who served as Newsom's top aide in 2022 and 2024. 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.
The revelation came from McGregor Scott, Williamson's attorney and a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California. The New York Post first reported Scott's confirmation that Podesta wore the wire. His statement was blunt:
"Alexis wore a wire, and Dana did not."
That five-word sentence carries considerable weight. It means someone inside Newsom's own political machinery was cooperating with federal investigators while the governor's chief of staff still held power, and that the FBI had enough cause to deploy that kind of surveillance tool within Sacramento's political elite.
The wire wasn't the only surveillance tool in play. The FBI also sent letters to political insiders and lobbyists across Sacramento's Capitol community informing them that their phone calls had been intercepted during the Williamson probe. Republican Assemblymember Josh Hoover of Folsom said he received one of those letters, even though he told reporters he had never spoken with either Williamson or Podesta.
Hoover described the scope of the federal effort in comments reported by Newsmax:
"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."
He added: "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."
That broad net is now ensnaring figures well beyond Williamson. The Eastern District of California's investigation has expanded to include Newsom himself, members of his staff, and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The probe has been ongoing since 2025 and is reportedly based on whistleblower complaints related to the Newsoms' personal finances.
At the center of Williamson's guilty plea is a scheme federal prosecutors say funneled roughly $225,000 from a dormant campaign account belonging to former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, now described as the Democratic frontrunner to succeed Newsom as governor, to Becerra's chief of staff, Sean McCluskie, for personal use.
Podesta's attorney has said she "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." Podesta has not been charged with a crime.
But the timeline raises hard questions. If Podesta began wearing a wire in June 2024, she was cooperating with the FBI while Williamson still served as Newsom's top aide. The governor appointed Podesta to California's State Compensation Insurance Fund board in 2020, a position that pays nearly $61,000 a year. She previously held positions in other administrations, worked for Disney, and worked for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
It has not been reported whether Podesta's wire recordings captured anything that incriminated the governor himself. That gap matters, but so does the fact that the FBI considered it worthwhile to place a cooperating source that close to the governor's office.
Governor Newsom's reaction to the federal scrutiny has followed a familiar playbook. Rather than address the substance of the investigation, he accused President Trump of "coming after" him for considering a presidential run. When Trump commented last year that Newsom "should be arrested" over his handling of illegal immigration and three nights of riots over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, Newsom called it an "unmistakable step toward authoritarianism."
That framing, casting a legitimate federal investigation as political persecution, conveniently sidesteps the fact that Newsom's own chief of staff has already pleaded guilty to serious federal crimes. Williamson admitted to conspiracy, fraud, false tax filings, and lying to the FBI. These are not manufactured charges. They are the product of an investigation that yielded a guilty plea.
Williamson, through her attorney, declined to cooperate further with federal investigators, stating she "did not have information on Newsom." Whether that claim holds up as the investigation widens remains to be seen. Federal investigators evidently believe there is more to find, otherwise the probe would not have expanded to include the governor and his wife.
Meanwhile, a Daily Mail report from March detailed allegations that Jennifer Siebel Newsom pocketed over $3 million from her charity, The Representation Project, funneling money to herself and her company, Girls Club LLC, over the past decade. The political fallout from the federal probe has already rippled through Democratic circles.
The Newsom investigation does not exist in isolation. Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District have shown a willingness to pursue cases that Sacramento's political establishment might prefer to keep quiet. The wire, the intercepted phone calls, the FBI notification letters to lawmakers and lobbyists, all of it points to an investigation that is serious, methodical, and far from finished.
Hoover, the Republican assemblymember, captured the public mood plainly: "All of this stuff just raises so many questions. What is going on in this administration? I think the entire case should be really concerning for the general public. It's really raising a lot of mistrust."
That mistrust is earned. When the governor's own chief of staff pleads guilty to federal fraud charges, when a member of his inner circle wears a wire for the FBI, when the investigation expands to include the governor and his wife, and when the governor's primary defense is to accuse the president of political targeting, reasonable people are entitled to ask what Sacramento has been hiding.
California Republicans have pressed for accountability on multiple fronts, but the state's Democratic supermajority has offered little appetite for oversight. The federal government, it appears, has filled the vacuum.
Several key questions remain unanswered. What exactly did Podesta's recordings capture? Has a grand jury been convened? What specific whistleblower complaints triggered the expansion of the probe to the Newsoms? Has Becerra, whose dormant campaign account sat at the center of the fraud scheme, been interviewed or subpoenaed? None of these questions have public answers yet.
The broader pattern of federal investigations in California suggests that law enforcement is no longer willing to look the other way in a state where one-party rule has long meant one-party accountability, which is to say, very little accountability at all.
Newsom wants voters to believe the FBI investigation is a political hit job orchestrated from the White House. That argument requires ignoring the guilty plea his own chief of staff already entered, the wire his own ally already wore, and the whistleblower complaints that reportedly set the whole thing in motion.
Podesta has not been charged. Williamson has pleaded guilty but says she has nothing on the governor. Newsom denies wrongdoing and points the finger at Trump. The FBI, as is its custom, says nothing publicly while the investigation grinds forward.
When a governor's defense rests entirely on accusing his investigators of bad faith, while his closest aides plead guilty and his allies carry wires, the public is right to wonder whether the problem is the investigation or the conduct it uncovered.
