The following article, Newsom’s FBI Wake-Up Call, was first published on The Black Sphere.

Picture this: It’s a crisp autumn morning in Sacramento, the kind where the fog clings to the Capitol like a guilty conscience refusing to lift.

Envelopes arrive, not with party invitations or campaign swag, but with the cold precision of federal regret—FBI missives announcing, “Hey, remember those late-night texts about funneling funds? Yeah, we read them. All of them.”

And who gets these bureaucratic Dear John letters?

A select cadre of Gavin Newsom’s inner circle, those sharp-suited architects of California’s progressive paradise, now squirming under the gaze of the very deep-state machine they once wielded like a sledgehammer. It’s not just irony; it’s irony doing backflips in a funhouse mirror. Why? Because this surveillance tango happened under Joe Biden’s watch, not the orange specter they love to blame for every ill from traffic jams to existential dread.

Nothing says “hysterically funny with a purpose” like unpacking a scandal that smells like yesterday’s graft reheated for brunch.

Dana Williamson, Newsom’s former chief of staff didn’t just trip over a loose ethics wire; she allegedly orchestrated a symphony of sleight-of-hand that would make a Vegas magician blush.

From early 2023 until her quiet exit in late 2024, Williamson helmed the governor’s office with the tenacity of a barnacle on a battleship. But behind the scenes, federal prosecutors paint a picture of a woman who treated a dormant campaign fund like her personal piggy bank, siphoning off $225,000 meant for Xavier Becerra’s long-forgotten war chest. Becerra, that erstwhile health secretary and eternal Democratic climber, now eyeing Newsom’s throne in the 2026 gubernatorial scrum—talk about awkward family reunions.

The indictment, unsealed like a bad divorce decree on November 12, 2025, slaps Williamson with 23 felony counts: conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, straight-up bank fraud, wire fraud, plotting to defraud the U.S. and obstruct justice, plus a cherry on top of false tax returns and fibbing to the feds.

We’re talking about billing for “consulting services” that existed only in the fever dreams of spreadsheets—phantom work funneled through her political consulting firm to a pal’s spouse. Meanwhile, Williamson pocketed the proceeds for jaunts on private jets, stays in resorts that scream “not taxpayer-funded,” designer bags that could double as briefcases for laundering alibis, and no-show gigs for friends.

Over a million bucks in bogus business deductions, prosecutors say, as Williamson turned Uncle Sam’s coffers into her walk-in closet. She pleaded not guilty, of course. Because in the grand theater of Sacramento, denial is the opening act.

I repeat: this probe kicked off over three years ago

What gives, Joey Demento? And here we thought Biden’s DOJ was too busy chasing shadows in Mar-a-Lago to notice the skeletons rattling in any Democrat’s closet.

And those letters? Oh, they’re the plot twist that has the whole Capitol clutching Perrier.

Starting hot on the heels of Williamson’s arraignment, the FBI began notifying a “handful” of Newsom’s current and ex-aides, plus a swarm of lobbyists from D.C. to the Delta, that their comms got scooped up between May and July 2024.

Texts, calls, emails—the digital detritus of deal-making, all intercepted without these folks being the bullseye. It’s like being the unwitting extra in a heist flick, only to get the script pages revealing you held the getaway car keys.

Sources whisper of paranoia rippling through the ranks: Phones go silent, BlackBerrys gather dust (do they still make those?), and everyone’s suddenly very interested in carrier pigeons. Why now, under Biden’s benevolent bungle of an administration? The feds insist it’s routine housekeeping, but let’s call it what it is—a glitch in the matrix where even the Left’s guardians of the galaxy start guarding against their own.

This isn’t some isolated oopsie in the Golden State; it’s the latest verse in a ballad of blue-state blues that’s been crooning corruption since the days when Boss Tweed would’ve felt underdressed in Sacramento.

Flash back to the 1980s, when “Shrimpgate” scandalized the Assembly—Democrats caught peddling influence for shrimp-farming subsidies, a seafood sideshow that birthed term limits because even the voters smelled the rot.

Fast-forward to the Aughts: Assemblyman Ron Calderon, that Montebello maestro of mischief, indicted in 2014 for taking bribes to bury bills, turning the Capitol into a pay-to-play arcade. Then there’s Leland Yee, San Francisco’s would-be senator, who in 2014 traded gun-running dreams for campaign cash, landing five years in the clink for favors that made “quid pro quo” sound quaint.

Need more to understand how politics works in the land of fruits and nuts? Then how about the Bell scandal of 2010, where a podunk L.A. suburb’s Democratic council paid themselves six-figure salaries to “manage” a town of 40,000. These “legislators” pocketed millions in kickbacks until the feds crashed the potluck. And in case you haven’t seen the pattern of corruption, check out the San Francisco Public Works empire under Mohammed Nuru, crumbling in 2020 amid a web of bribes, rigged contracts, and enough fraud to pave the Bay Bridge twice over.

These aren’t aberrations; they’re the family heirlooms of one-party rule, where Democrats’ supermajority turns oversight into an oxymoron and accountability into a punchline.

With no real opposition to keep the wolves at bay, the pack turns inward, feasting on the flock. Historical data backs the punch: A 2021 CalMatters tally clocked over a dozen Democratic indictments in a single decade, from perjury to perquisite pilfering. It’s the sunk-cost symphony of power—pour billions into high-speed rail mirages, then act shocked when the tracks lead to personal slush funds.

Speaking of which, Williamson’s woes feel like a warm-up act for Newsom’s magnum opus: that bullet train to… well, nowhere, really.

Ah, the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s crown jewel, a gleaming promise from 2008’s Prop 1A ballot ballet, when voters greenlit $9.95 billion for a zippy link from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The projected costs were set at $33 billion and the project wrapped up by 2020.

Fast-forward to 2025: $15 billion flushed, zero miles of high-speed track laid, and costs ballooning to a whopping $135 billion—a bad sequel where the budget eats the plot.

Newsom, inheriting this hot potato from Jerry Brown, scaled it back in 2019 to a Central Valley stub from Merced to Bakersfield–I know, right!– a 171-mile tease that’s already overrun by $10 billion and won’t chug till 2030, if ever.

Critics, including a Hoover Institution audit, lambast the mismanagement: Land bought without rights-of-way, utilities ignored like forgotten props, contracts ballooning faster than a politician’s ego. Trump yanked $4 billion in federal seed money last July, calling it a “boondoggle” led by “incompetent Governor Newscum”—a moniker that lands like a gut-punch guffaw, because who needs policy when you’ve got poetry?

But here’s the unique twist few ponder amid the fiscal fireworks: What if this train isn’t just a money pit, but a metaphor for the Left’s ethical express?

It starts with grand visions—equity! Sustainability! Jobs!—but derails into cronyism, where consultants like the Williamson’s ilk lobby for extensions that line their pockets while riders wait for a ghost. Data from the project’s own board shows $11 billion in cap-and-trade funds diverted, $4.5 billion in bonds hawked to investors, yet progress crawls at 0.1 miles per year. Compare that to Trump’s border wall—flawed, sure. But chunks of it stand, built with private-sector grit, not endless excuses.

Conservatives see it plain: Limited government means no blank checks for utopian fever dreams. We prioritize borders, babies, and balanced books, not vanity projects that subsidize Sacramento’s social scene.

So why the FBI’s sudden spine under Biden?

Maybe it’s the quiet rebellion of career feds, tired of shielding their own from the spotlight they shine on others. Or perhaps it’s the cosmic joke of karma, where the surveillance state they built boomerangs back, catching whispers of “Co-Conspirator 2″—an unnamed ex-official stepping in to keep the grift greased while Williamson played chief.

Newsom, ever the telegenic tightrope walker, swears he’s clean—no letters for him, no interviews, just “real surprise and shock” at his protégé’s peril. He sidelined her in November 2024 the moment she sang the investigation blues, a move as swift as it was scripted; like tossing a lifeboat to distract from the iceberg. But whispers persist: Was she the canary in the coal mine, chirping distractions from bigger birds? Her lawyer claims feds dangled immunity for dirt on the guv, but that’s Sacramento theater—smoke without fire, or so they pray.

Zoom out, and the comedy curdles into cautionary tale. In a state where Democrats have ruled unchecked since the Reagan recall, corruption isn’t the bug; it’s the feature, a self-perpetuating engine fueled by donor dollars and deferred dreams.

Historical precedents scream it: The 1990s Gray Davis recall, sparked by energy scandals that blacked out the state while insiders lit up their ledgers. Or the 2014 Senate flip from supermajority to scandal-plagued parity after Calderon and Rod Wright’s perjury plea. Each time, the party vows reform—tighter ethics rules! More disclosures!—only to revert, because power’s allure is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and hypocrisy its chaser.

From a conservative perch, this is vindication wrapped in iridescent velvet sarcasm: Trump’s America First ethos exposed the bloat, from border chaos to budget black holes, while the Left’s “systemic” obsessions blind them to their own systemic sleaze. We don’t need witch hunts; we need sunlight, the kind that scorches weeds in the garden of governance. Newsom’s crew, surveilled by their own shadow puppets, now eyes the exits, wondering if the next envelope holds cuffs or just more questions. As for the bullet train? It’s chugging toward fiscal Armageddon, a $135 billion testament to misplaced trust in mandarins who promise paradise but deliver potholes.

The real gut-buster? While conservatives rally around leaders like Trump—who built empires without embezzling empires—Democrats’ house of cards folds under its own weight. It’s not schadenfreude; it’s schadenreality, a reminder that true progress isn’t paved with pilfered promises.

In California’s orchard of ambition, the apples don’t just not fall far from the tree ready to eat—they’re rotten to the core.

Continue reading Newsom’s FBI Wake-Up Call …

[H/T The Black Sphere]