Gavin Newsom called Trump's investigation a political hit job aimed at his family.
Federal agents in Sacramento had already started pulling financial records months earlier.
What they found inside his wife's classroom materials is the part Newsom never mentioned.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom Charity Curriculum Tells Students Who To Vote For
Jennifer Siebel Newsom runs two nonprofits under her "First Partner" title – The Representation Project and the California Partners Project.
Both claim a mission of empowering women and girls.
Their classroom curriculum tells a different story.
One lesson plan instructs students to vote for candidates who back a "living wage," "universal healthcare" and "progressive taxation."
That's not education. That's a Democrat Socialist voter guide handed to teenagers with a tax-exempt stamp on it.
California political law attorney Derek Ross didn't mince words about what that means under federal rules.
"Any reasonable reader will understand candidates who support those policies means Democrats," Ross said.
He went further on the voter registration push baked into the same curriculum.
"A 501(c)(3) cannot condition registration outreach on the registrant's policy views," Ross said. "To the IRS, that's targeted partisan registration activity, which is prohibited."
Federal law bars 501(c)(3) charities from intervening in political campaigns – directly or indirectly – for or against any candidate. The penalty for crossing that line is loss of tax-exempt status and excise taxes on top of it.
Retired IRS agent Chuck Walker spent decades enforcing exactly that rule. He wouldn't comment on the Newsom organizations by name, but he laid out the standard.
"The country is very polarized, and there's not much of a gray area," Walker said.
DOJ Investigation Examines Money Moved Between Siebel Newsom Charity And Production Company
Siebel Newsom's for-profit company, Girls Club Entertainment, made the documentaries. Her nonprofit, the Representation Project – where she's the paid CEO – then licensed those same films and sold school screening packages for almost $300 a pop.
IRS filings show Girls Club Entertainment pulled roughly $3.7 million from that nonprofit between 2012 and 2023.
Gavin Newsom shows up on camera in those films five separate times, pushing political messages to middle schoolers and high schoolers.
Walker said an elected official appearing prominently in a spouse's nonprofit-funded productions – combined with money flowing between the nonprofit and a for-profit company the spouse owns – is exactly the kind of setup that draws IRS scrutiny.
"If there is any advantage, fruit, or gain to an insider…there is an excise tax of 25% that can be imposed on that excess benefit to the individual," Walker said.
Newsom's spokeswoman Tara Gallegos insists none of this touches the governor's office, claiming his film appearances happened "in his personal capacity" before he even took office.
That defense gets harder to sell once you follow where the donations came from.
Behested Payments To Newsom Charity Include PG&E Paradise Fire Donor
Pacific Gas & Electric – convicted on six criminal counts after the San Bruno pipeline explosion, later found criminally liable for the Paradise fire that killed 84 people – sent at least $360,000 to the Representation Project.
The utility walked away with a board seat and a producer credit on one of Siebel Newsom's films.
The Newsoms eventually stopped taking PG&E money for the nonprofit after Paradise. PG&E turned around and sent $350,000 to Newsom's own ballot measure instead.
The California Partners Project has pulled in at least $4.3 million in behested payments – donations solicited by Newsom himself under his own name, fully legal under California law but fully revealing about who's funding his wife's operation.
Newsom was fined $31,500 on June 18 for failing to report some of those payments on time.
The board members tell the rest of the story. Tom Willis, a partner at the law firm that represents Newsom before California's ethics commission, sits on the California Partners Project board. Joanna Rees, whom Newsom appointed to chair a state workforce board in 2025, sits on the Representation Project board alongside longtime Newsom adviser Brian Brokaw.
Records show California politicians directed $555.9 million in behested payments over fifteen years. Newsom alone is responsible for $347.2 million of it – better than 62 percent of the entire statewide total.
Companies that have business in California are making donations to the nonprofit of the governor’s wife.
Members of the Pritzker family gave nearly $650,000 to the California Partners Project. In 2024, Newsom bought a $9.1 million home from a Pritzker heir.
California Partners Project Curriculum Pushes Gender Ideology On Kids
Beyond the voting instructions, the same school materials include the "Genderbread Person" graphic mapping gender identity across spectrums, and a "Privilege Walk" exercise sorting students by race, gender, sexual orientation and income.
In 2025, Siebel Newsom partnered with a group that has fought bans on biological males competing in girls' high school sports.
The Representation Project's own website spells out the real goal: "bending the long arc of history toward intersectional gender justice."
Newsom wants voters to see his wife as collateral damage in a Trump vendetta. The boards, the donors, the curriculum and the money trail all point somewhere else – toward a political machine that happens to be IRS-exempt.
Federal investigators in Sacramento will decide whether any of it crossed a legal line. The documents already on the record raise the question of why it took a federal subpoena to get anyone looking.
Sources:
- Susan Crabtree, "Jennifer Siebel Newsom's nonprofit network faces legal questions amid federal investigation," The California Post, June 29, 2026.
- Joel Pollak, "Newsom's political defense faces skepticism as DOJ investigation continues," Fox Business, June 2026.
- Staff report, "What we know about the Justice Department investigation into Jennifer Siebel Newsom," CNN, June 16, 2026.
