Order Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left: HERE.
Gov. Gavin Newsom had helped set up a state government agency for his wife and then a quasi-government non-profit to which he has directed millions of dollars which in turn helped promote yet another non-profit that puts millions of dollars in the pockets of the Newsoms.
That convoluted arrangement may explain why Newsom won’t turn over his tax returns.
Gov. Newsom promised to be the first California governor to release his tax returns every year, but media outlets have been grumbling that the last time he released a tax return was quite a few years ago when he was legally required to because he was running for reelection.
The questions got louder when he bought a $9 million house in addition to their $6 million house. The new 5,609 square foot estate comes with a spa, sculptures and Brazilian decks, and was bought from a member of the billionaire Pritzker clan, who have been one of Newsom’s major donors, and carries a $6.5 million mortgage with $600,000 in annual payments plus over $100,000 in property taxes. Some have been asking where all that money was coming from.
This may only be the tip of the iceberg considering that in 2019, the Newsoms had paid their household staff $288,000 alone. Assuming that the staffing costs have kept pace, California’s first family should be looking at very some very huge bills to maintain their outrageous lifestyle.
As of last fall, Newsom still hasn’t released a tax return. We do know that Newsom’s income shot up by $500,000 to $1.7 million in his first year in office. Back then, his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, was earning $151,000, through her ‘non-profit’, The Representation Project, which set out to teach children, especially boys, about the evils of gender roles and masculinity.
Since then Newsom’s gubernatorial salary grew from $210,000 to $242,295: a sizable raise, but even with his winery, restaurant and investments in a blind trust, it may not explain his spending.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, whose boutique causes include gender pay parity, however has been earning a higher salary than her husband as her non-profit took in $1.5 million in 2024 and 20% of that money went to her with $150,000 going directly to her as salary and another $150,000 going to her Girls Club Entertainment LLC for compensation as “Writer/Producer/Director”.
Girls Club Entertainment is listed as an “independent contractor” even though it also admits on the same tax filing that “Girls Club Entertainment LLC (GCE), a single member LLC, is owned by Jennifer Siebel Newsom” and also claims that she serves as the writer, producer and director of the various ‘documentaries’ that she licenses to her non-profit which then reimburses her.
Since the non-profit, originally titled ‘Miss Representation’ after the name of one of her ‘documentaries’, was set up to promote them, the arrangement appears to exist to allow her to benefit from non-profit funding while diverting a significant amount of the funds to herself.
An arrangement under which Newsom’s wife is simultaneously the CEO, board member and an ‘independent contractor’, who manages to cash out a significant percentage of its revenues, is legally dubious and risks falling under the IRS prohibitions against self-enrichment.
In 2023, Newsom’s non-profit took in $1 million and again paid out $300,000 or around a third to her. In 2020, it took in a little over $800,000 and she received the same amount or 37%. The Daily Mail estimated that her total came in at over $3.7 million in the decade.
Where was all that money coming from to what would normally be just another obscure organization? The answer in part is the government and government lobbyists and contractors. The ‘films’ made by Newsom’s wife have been shown in thousands of schools and received millions in revenues. More money has come through donations from major companies that do business with the state or are lobbying the state for some favorable treatment.
At the Project’s most recent ‘Flip the Script’ benefit, “celebrating the 10th anniversary of Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s groundbreaking film, Miss Representation”, the co-chair was Gavin Newsom’s sister, who runs their joint company, the other co-chairs were Lori Puccinelli Stern, the wife of the San Francisco Airport Commissioner, who heads a PR firm, and Joanna Rees, a venture capitalist who was appointed to a board by Newsom.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s outsized media presence is partly funded by California taxpayers.
After taking office, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he was creating an ‘Office of the First Partner’ for his wife led by two senior staffers with combined salaries of over a quarter of a million dollars. The most recent organizational chart for the office shows 7 staffers including two communications staffers just for Newsom’s wife: all with six figure salaries.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom co-created yet another non-profit for the Office of the First Partner, the California Partners Project: a 501(c)(4). The partisan non-profit, which regularly attacks Republicans, is directly linked to and promoted by the California governor’s site. Its board includes Becky Beland McNaught who was originally hired as the chief of staff at the Office of the First Partner. McNaught made opening remarks at a screening of one of her ‘films’ that was sponsored by the California Partners Project and the Representation Project.
The California Partners Project claims a semi-official status, stating that it operates “in partnership with the people of California.” What it does is promote Newsom’s wife and her non-profit which provides millions in income to Gov. Newsom and his wife.
In 2022, the LA Daily News reported that The California Partners Project had collected $1.6 million in ‘behested payments’ through Gov. Newsom. These are payments that were requested by Newsom on behalf of his wife’s organization. By 2023, the amount had risen to $2.4 million.
Newsom requested that one donor, an Indian tribe seeking to block a rival’s casino, donate $500,000, before intervening on its behalf. By 2025, the amount was up to $2 million.
Is Gov. Newsom pressuring and rewarding companies for donating to his wife’s non-profit and does that non-profit then help promote his wife’s other extremely profitable ‘non-profit’?
Other state agencies have also worked to promote Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s lucrative non-profit including the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, in theory a non-partisan state agency, which pushed her ‘documentary’ Miss Representation.
Holly Martinez, the executive director of the Commission, switched to serving as the executive director of Mrs. Newsom’s Representation Project and then as her Chief of Staff in the Office of the First Partner, illustrating how government agencies, the paid non-profit and the First Lady’s office have become an interchangeable game of musical chairs all to promote one woman.
And her organization that has put millions of dollars into the pockets of the Newsoms.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom has proven to be quite adroit at moving money and influence from non-profits and foundations that she controls to herself. For example, the Siebel Family Charitable Foundation, a family foundation where she acts as a director, provided $23,000, one of its largest grants, as of its last tax filing, to The Representation Project.
Newsom was an honorary board member of the International Museum of Women, that was set to be launched in San Francisco and that was supposed to be publicly funded, but instead burned through millions of dollars, but did partner with The Representation Project. Gavin Newsom and his wife had served as honorary co-chairs for the museum’s fundraiser.
She was a board member of KQED, the local PBS affiliate, which provided gushing coverage of not only her husband’s administration, but also promoted her ‘documentaries’. Like so much else, this arrangement appears to have been useful for both halves of the power couple.
The networks of non-profits, some state, some funded by those who have business with the state, has clearly played a role in allowing the Newsoms to afford their lavish lifestyle.
Many of these questions could be cleared up if the Newsoms would release their tax returns.
In 2019, Gov. Newsom championed a law forcing presidential candidates to release their returns. The purpose of the law was to target Trump. Fortunately for Newsom, the law was found to be unconstitutional, and so he won’t have to release his tax returns or address the many conflicts of interest and the ways that he has grown even richer while governor.
Photo credit: Franco Folini from San Francisco, USA per Wikimedia Commons.
In order to eliminate spam comments that have historically flooded our comments section, comments containing certain keywords will be held in a moderation queue. All comments by legitimate commenters will be manually approved by a member of our team. If your comment is “Awaiting Moderation,” please give us up to 24 hours to manually approve your comment. Please do not re-post the same comment.
