The governor of America's most populous state says the Justice Department is hunting for a crime against him, and he seems almost eager to be indicted.

"One by one, anyone who has challenged Donald Trump has ended up on his hit list. Today, I proudly join that list."

— Gavin Newsom, California governor, June 15, 2026

On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom released a five-minute video declaring that the Department of Justice was conducting a politically motivated investigation into him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Federal agents, he said, had been knocking on the doors of family friends, former employees, business associates, and donors. They were demanding records. They were asking deeply personal questions. And according to Newsom, they were searching for a crime that did not exist.

The governor framed it as retaliation for something straightforward: he is considering running for president in 2028. "Donald Trump isn't just coming after me because of my mean tweets," Newsom said. "He's coming after me because I'm considering running for president, because he hates that I've consistently called him out over and over again for his lies and deceit."

Translation: whatever the Justice Department is actually investigating, Newsom wants you to believe it is a personal vendetta disguised as law enforcement. Whether that belief is warranted depends on what you think of the evidence so far.

A person familiar with the matter told reporters that at least two criminal investigations involving Newsom have been ongoing for approximately a year in the Eastern District of California. They originated from whistleblowers and people within Sacramento's political ecosystem. One probe relates to Siebel Newsom's taxes. The other involves Dana Williamson, Newsom's former chief of staff, who pleaded guilty on May 14 to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and lying to the FBI.

Williamson was at the center of Sacramento politics for more than a decade. She served as Newsom's chief of staff and later as campaign manager for Xavier Becerra, who ran for California attorney general in 2018. According to court documents, Williamson conspired with Becerra's longtime chief of staff Sean McCluskie and another lobbyist to divert $225,000 from a dormant Becerra campaign account. Neither Becerra nor Newsom has been accused of wrongdoing in the case. Becerra became the Democratic nominee for governor of California last week.

The person familiar with the matter denied the existence of an investigation specifically targeting Newsom himself but acknowledged that the Williamson probe had expanded to include other staff members. The investigation was originally opened by President Joe Biden's Justice Department, not Trump's.

That detail matters. It means the foundation of these probes predates the current administration entirely. But it does not mean the current administration could not be expanding them.

Newsom's office characterized what is happening as a fishing expedition that federal prosecutors launched after hitting a dead end with Williamson. "They have spent years and years looking for random documents," Newsom said in his video. His legal affairs secretary, David Sapp, filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Monday seeking all communications between Justice Department leaders mentioning Newsom or his wife during Trump's second term. The governor's office set a July 6 deadline for a response.

Neither the White House nor the Justice Department has commented. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declined to answer questions about the allegations during a photo opportunity with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on Monday afternoon. Blanche was in Washington to discuss his nomination to become attorney general.

Newsom's office said no subpoenas had been served directly on the governor or Siebel Newsom as of Monday, though they believed federal agents had subpoenaed financial records for businesses associated with the couple. Newsom said he "looks forward" to receiving them.

Translation: nobody has formally accused anyone yet, but the pressure is mounting through peripheral contacts and document requests that signal something bigger is coming.

Newsom placed his allegations in the context of a broader pattern. He named former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former CIA Director John Brennan, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as people who have faced DOJ investigations or prosecutions during Trump's second term. The Protect Democracy organization maintains a publicly accessible tracker of what it calls retaliatory actions by the Trump administration, and the list has grown steadily since January.

Comey faces a second attempted indictment. James has been investigated over her probe of Trump's business records. Brennan was targeted after criticizing the president for years on social media. Powell came under scrutiny shortly after refusing to lower interest rates in line with White House pressure. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the former vice presidential candidate, was also mentioned by Newsom as someone on Trump's radar.

The common thread is not that any of these people are innocent. It is that the timing and targeting align suspiciously well with who has publicly opposed Trump. When a sitting president routinely calls for his critics to be investigated, then those critics end up investigated, the coincidence becomes its own evidence.

Siebel Newsom released her own statement Monday, calling the investigation proof that Trump was unfit for office. "There are clearly no boundaries to what Donald Trump will do to get his way or to challenge those who get in his way," she said. She is a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on the social impacts of sexism. Through her nonprofit, the California Partners Project, she championed gender equity initiatives and solicited at least $1.9 million in charitable behested payments during 2024 and 2025, including $1 million from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, according to Fair Political Practices Commission filings.

Newsom himself came to office with PlumpJack, a successful hospitality company he placed in a blind trust. But blind trusts are not firewalls against scrutiny. They are at best partial shields, and federal investigators have ways of looking behind them. The governor's office intimated that agents were examining payments made to Siebel Newsom's film production company, Girls Club Entertainment.

The relationship between California and the Trump administration has been combative for months. Trump has curtailed California's authority to set vehicle emissions standards, withheld federal aid for wildfire recovery in Los Angeles, and sued over state policies supporting transgender student-athletes. California has responded by suing the federal government dozens of times. Newsom also led a successful effort to redraw California's congressional districts to add five Democratic House seats, directly countering a Trump-backed redistricting scheme in Texas.

This is not a feud that began with an FBI knock on a friend's door. It is a feud that has been escalating since January, and the Justice Department investigation is simply the latest weapon in it.

What happens next depends on whether prosecutors find something or decide they have gone far enough. If they indict Newsom, the story becomes about the charges, not the politics. If they close the case without action, the story becomes about the abuse of power, not the evidence. Either way, Trump's administration has succeeded in making a potential 2028 rival spend his political capital defending himself instead of building his campaign.

Newsom said he was proud to be on Trump's enemies list. He may be right to feel that way. Being targeted by the Justice Department is not an honor, but it is a form of recognition. It means you are someone the president believes he can hurt. And in American politics, being someone worth hurting is often the first step toward becoming someone worth voting for.

The question is not whether Trump wanted this investigation to happen. The question is whether anyone still thinks it matters that he did.