Gaslight: Gavin Newsom claims President Trump is targeting him to stop his run for president

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, found himself under the Department of Justice’s investigation microscope and immediately tried to make political hay from it, piously intoning that Trump was targeting political opponents such as himself in a bid to stop his run for president.

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He, uh, didn’t mention the corruption problem, let alone any specific charges. He said:

“Today, my wife & I joined Donald Trump’s hit list. He has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us. They have not found a crime – they are simply trying to find one. He isn’t coming after me because of mean tweets, but because I am considering running for President. He hates that I consistently call him out. He is simply the most corrupt President in American history.”

But there are a lot of potential corruption charges potentially against him, as Susan Crabtree, who has written a book about the matter, details, they include:

Potential charges related to the arrest and conviction of his now-former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, a powerful bureaucrat who ran the state “like a mafia,” of cronies and patronage. That investigation started during Joe Biden’s, not Donald Trump’s, term, and continued to the present day as investigators unraveled the thread.

Crabtree noted that Newsom’s response at the time of the Williamson arrest was: “We’ve all got to be held to the letter of the law.”

She continued:

That was May. By June, federal agents were knocking on the doors of Newsom’s own friends and family associates — and the governor’s tune had changed considerably.

On Monday, Newsom posted a video accusing President Trump of weaponizing the Justice Department against him, framing several federal investigations into his wife’s taxes and his circle of associates as a politically motivated fishing expedition designed to kneecap a prospective 2028 presidential rival.

Another area of potential charges does indeed include his wife, in what are known as behested payments. Her nonprofit, “Representation Project,” which promotes transgenderism through producing videos, paid her a $1.5 million salary between 2013 and 2021,  and corporations with business before the state shelled out multiple thousand dollar amounts in a pay-to-play arrangement that looks like bribery.

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Here’s more he ought to be answering questions about:

There also is the missing ‘Fire Aid’ money, some $100 million of it, none of which went to the victims of the Palisades or Eaton fires, but some of which reportedly ended up in Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit.

Another problem with the films is that seem to be political ads urging viewers to vote Democrat. Crabtree writes:

The films’ accompanying materials also include what critics have described as overt political advocacy; they feature commentary from Gov. Newsom himself pressing student viewers to organize with friends and vote for politicians supporting a “care economy” that “embraces universal human values” which critics have described as essentially campaign ads.

Not one of these festering issues has been addressed by Newsom, yet the public can see what is happening and surely conclude that he’s corruption incarnate. All anyone has to do is look at how the state is run and conclude that there’s corruption shot through the system in California.

Trump is unlikely to be involved in any politicized prosecution of Newsom because there’s lots of ‘there, there,’ lots of reasons for real prosecutions, and nothing he would have to ‘nudge.’ The other thing is, he’s not running for re-election which is another discentive to get involved, and more significantly, Kamala Harris leads by a wide margin in most polls of the Democrats. The latest TIPP poll, featured on Real Clear Politics shows Harris at 31, and Newsom at 14.

A  lot of Republicans, of course, are suspecting it’s a ‘sauce for the gander’ moment, given the left’s lawfare campaign against Trump.

But that is a red herring.

Newsom’s problem is that he’s lived in a petri dish of corruption for his entire political life and impunity for illegal acts is normally ignored and gotten away with. That the corruption has snowballed to Somali-fraudster levels in California suggests some critical mass was hit, not that Trump decided to target Newsom. If he did, the cases would fall apart. But Newsom doesn’t want to talk about the cases, to say he didn’t do whatever it is he is about to be accused of doing. He wants to talk about Trump, accusing him of a political persecution without bringing up what Democrats did to him.

It’s a particularly stinky gaslight to try to change the narrative from his own corruption to political persecution, the better to get off scot-free. Newsom needs to be held accountable for the low state he’s brought California to, and explain his massive unearned weath, to voters and lawmen. It’s about time.

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Image: X screenshot