Before the federal corruption investigation expanded to include California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife, the FBI already had someone on the inside. Alexis Podesta, a 45-year-old Democratic power broker, Newsom appointee, and longtime fixture of Sacramento's political establishment, was secretly recording conversations as a cooperating witness, the New York Post reported.
The revelation came from an unlikely source: the defense attorney for Newsom's former chief of staff, Dana Williamson. McGregor Scott, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California now representing Williamson, confirmed the arrangement in blunt terms.
"Alexis wore a wire, and Dana did not," Scott told the Post.
That single sentence rewrites the narrative Newsom has tried to build around the federal probe, that it is nothing more than political retaliation ordered by President Trump ahead of a possible 2028 presidential campaign. If the FBI had a cooperating witness embedded inside the governor's orbit as far back as June 2024, the investigation was already well underway on its own terms, driven by evidence serious enough to justify wiretaps and covert recordings inside the California Capitol community.
Williamson, 53, pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and making false statements to the FBI. Federal prosecutors alleged she orchestrated a scheme to siphon roughly $225,000 from a dormant campaign account belonging to Xavier Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary now considered the Democratic frontrunner to succeed Newsom as governor.
The money was disguised as legitimate consulting fees and routed to benefit Becerra's former chief of staff, Sean McCluskie. Williamson's plea agreement references a June 2024 wiretap in which she strategized with a co-conspirator about how to respond to a Public Records Act request involving state litigation against a company identified by reporting as Activision Blizzard.
That co-conspirator was Podesta. Her attorney, Bill Portanova, identified her as the uncharged co-conspirator described in the Williamson indictment, listed as "Co-Conspirator 2" in court filings, as the New York Post detailed in a separate profile. Portanova stated that Podesta began cooperating with federal investigators after uncovering what he characterized as wrongdoing by others.
Court records show Williamson and Podesta exchanged text messages about the Public Records Act request while Williamson served as Newsom's chief of staff. Williamson, in that role, shared confidential state government information with Podesta regarding the corporate client. And Podesta, according to the plea agreement timeline, was already wearing a wire by June 2024.
The FBI's surveillance reach extended far beyond Williamson and Podesta. Last fall, Sacramento political insiders and lobbyists received written notifications from the bureau informing them that their phone calls had been intercepted during the investigation.
Assemblymember Josh Hoover, a Republican from Folsom, told the Post he was among those who received the letters, even though he had never spoken with either Williamson or Podesta.
"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."
Hoover's bewilderment was shared by others. A separate source with knowledge of the matter described one recipient's reaction: "Dude, I got this f---ing letter. I never even met with Dana Williamson!" The source explained that the recipient's confusion stemmed from having no connection to Williamson, and then added: "And now you have the answer." The answer, it now appears, was Podesta.
At least four Sacramento insiders known to that source received similar FBI notifications. The full scope of the wiretap authorization remains unclear, but Hoover described what he saw as a sweeping effort.
"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."
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched the Newsom administration's recurring transparency problems. Whether it is budget errors concealed for months or confidential government information shared with political allies, the thread is the same: an inner circle that operated as though no one was watching.
Alexis Podesta is not some peripheral figure. She is a product of California's Democratic machine, former secretary of the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, a veteran of Gov. Jerry Brown's administration, and a onetime employee of PG&E, Disney, and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office. Newsom appointed her to the board of the California State Compensation Insurance Fund in January 2020, a position that pays nearly $61,000 a year.
She remains on that board today. Despite being named as an uncharged co-conspirator in a federal indictment, despite having worn a wire for the FBI inside the governor's political orbit, Podesta continues to collect taxpayer-funded compensation from a Newsom appointment.
The governor's office declined to comment on the circumstances involving Podesta, calling it a personnel matter. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California also declined comment.
When Williamson left private consulting to become Newsom's chief of staff in late 2022, Podesta inherited responsibility for overseeing Becerra's dormant campaign account. Campaign finance records show Becerra's committee paid Podesta Company, her business entity, mostly $10,000 monthly installments during 2023 and 2024. Those payments are now central to the fraud allegations. Portanova has maintained that Podesta did not know the payments were improper.
When Newsom announced last month that he, his wife, and members of his inner circle were under federal investigation, he framed it as a political hit job, accusing President Trump of directing the Department of Justice to target him ahead of a potential 2028 presidential run. Within hours of that announcement, Newsom blasted out a fundraising email for his political action committee.
That sequence, disclosure, accusation, fundraising appeal, tells its own story about priorities. The governor treated a federal criminal investigation as a campaign opportunity before the public had time to absorb the facts.
Federal investigators are now examining Newsom, his staff, and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom's taxes, according to sources familiar with the matter. Siebel Newsom's nonprofit has drawn scrutiny for its financial trajectory in recent years, and the DOJ probe has examined behested payments flowing to that organization. No charges have been filed against the governor or his wife. But the investigation's scope, wiretaps, a cooperating witness inside the inner circle, intercept notifications sent to lawmakers and lobbyists, suggests this is not the politically motivated fishing expedition Newsom wants voters to believe it is.
Williamson's attorney, Scott, said his client declined to cooperate with federal investigators because she had no information on Newsom. That claim will be tested as the case moves toward sentencing and as the broader probe continues.
Hoover, the Republican assemblymember, did not mince words about what the investigation means for public trust in the Newsom administration.
"All of this stuff just raises so many questions. What is going on in this administration? What types of conversations are being had? I think the entire case should be really concerning for the general public. It's really raising a lot of mistrust."
He went further, connecting the probe to Newsom's national ambitions.
"I think it underlines how problematic this current administration is. [Newsom] is someone who wants to run for president of the United States. It's really disappointing to see that this is the level of our politics."
The 2028 Democratic field is already taking shape. Xavier Becerra, whose dormant campaign account sits at the center of the fraud scheme, is reportedly the frontrunner to succeed Newsom in Sacramento. The jockeying within the Democratic Party for 2028 positioning makes the timing of this probe all the more significant. If Newsom's inner circle is rotten enough to require FBI wiretaps and cooperating witnesses, what does that say about the political ecosystem that produced the candidates now lining up to replace him?
Major gaps remain. It is unclear when Podesta began cooperating with the FBI, or how she was recruited. The June 2024 wiretap is the earliest confirmed date, but the investigation may have started earlier. No one has disclosed how many total people were recorded, or whether Podesta captured conversations specifically about Newsom, as opposed to Williamson and the campaign finance scheme alone.
The identity and allegations of the whistleblowers who reportedly tipped off federal investigators have not been made public. Sean McCluskie, the alleged beneficiary of the siphoned funds, has not been publicly charged, and his current status is unknown.
Podesta and her attorney did not respond to requests for comment. She has not been charged with a crime. But her continued presence on a taxpayer-funded state board, appointed by the very governor whose orbit she was secretly recording, is a fact that speaks for itself.
California's political class has long operated with a confidence born of one-party dominance. The contradictions that pile up when power goes unchecked eventually attract the attention of people with subpoena power. In Sacramento, that reckoning arrived wearing a wire.
When your own allies are recording you for the FBI, the problem is not political retaliation. The problem is what you said when you thought no one was listening.
