Gov. Gavin Newsom started this week with a bombshell announcement that he and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, are being investigated by President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. Power Play turned to Jessica Levinson, a constitutional law and campaign finance expert and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, to discuss the investigation and how she thinks it will pan out.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

What was your initial reaction to the news of the DOJ investigation?

Honestly, my initial reaction was, ‘Oh everybody is going to see this through the lens of who they support.’ My second response was, ‘Wow, we really know nothing. We have no specifics.’ Maybe my tertiary response was that we all need to be careful because we know that President Trump’s push for the Department of Justice to look into his political enemies have not all ended in the same way. Where I settled after seeing the news is we need to find out where career prosecutors and career investigators are on this particular issue. Basically, the people who have worked in the DOJ for years and years — do they think there’s a ‘there there’ to anything?

Gov. Newsom has characterized the investigation as a politically motivated attack because he’s considering running for president and has routinely criticized Trump. Does that argument have merit? 

Certainly, we have seen much more of a separation between previous presidents and the Department of Justice. Having said that, you could have a situation where two things are true at once. Where the Department of Justice only looks into Gavin Newsom because he is a political enemy of President Trump, but it also could be that they find something in the investigation. 

I truly have no idea if there’s anything that the investigation has uncovered, and I’m not saying I think they probably will or I think they probably won’t. It’s just that even a politically motivated investigation can turn up evidence. 

A source familiar with the investigation said there are two investigations underway; one is related to Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, who pleaded guilty this year to felony corruption charges, while a second is related to Siebel Newsom’s taxes and potentially her many nonprofits. Are these areas of vulnerability for the Newsoms? 

It’s very clear there is a “there” there in the [Williamson] case. But I have not seen any reporting to indicate that Gov. Newsom is connected to her wrongdoing. This is one of those things that would have been investigated. And there’s nothing at this point that I have seen that her wrongdoing stretched into his behavior. 

When it comes to the nonprofits, most of the questions have surrounded ethical issues, the connection between the funding of the nonprofits and those who either have business before the state or are also political donors of Gov. Newsom. Those, to me, are really questions about the ethics of our campaign finance system. That’s very different from saying somebody engaged in criminal behavior. 

How common are these kinds of investigations? 

I think it’s uncommon on all sides. It’s not typical that we have a first spouse who has created and/or run this many nonprofits. That’s not bad. It’s not saying that she has it coming, that people will look into her. It’s just to say that her financial background is more complicated than we’ve seen in the past. 

In terms of Dana Williamson’s wrongdoing, how common is it? Luckily, we don’t see a lot of those types of criminal cases. In terms of looking into Newsom, I think it’s entirely predictable that you would have looked into him for years just as the governor, not initiating a federal investigation. But he’s under a different level of scrutiny than most private citizens. 

— Hannah Wiley

GUN SHY: In the middle of his right-wing media blitz last year, Newsom went on conservative podcast host Shawn Ryan’s show to record a four-hour episode about life and politics. 

Ryan said he gives all his guests a gift, and for Newsom, he chose a Sig Sauer P365-Xmacro pistol — a shocking present for the governor of a state with the nation’s strictest firearm laws.

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Instead, Newsom called the gift “fabulous” and claimed he was “not anti-gun at all.” 

The gun is legal to own in California but would have been Newsom’s first firearm, his office told The Standard. State ethics rules limit the value of gifts that politicians can accept to $630, but the pistol retails for more than $700. Newsom’s spokesperson Izzy Gardon said at the time that Newsom would pay Ryan anything over the limit — which he did, according to financial disclosure forms filed in March that showed Newsom paid Ryan whatever the difference was for the gun over $600.

Newsom told Ryan that he supported Second Amendment rights, but that he was also challenged by the proliferation of “weapons of war” and said California’s gun rules have contributed to a safer state. 

“But otherwise, man,” Newsom said, “people have the right to bear arms.” Which, it seems, Newsom has chosen not to. The gun is “currently held by [a] licensed firearm dealer, and not in [the] Governor’s possession,” his form noted.

— H.W.

TURBOCHARGE: The latest effort to accelerate housing production in California just qualified for the November ballot (opens in new tab): the “Building an Affordable California Act.” While it’s been characterized as another in a long list of reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act, the notorious law that YIMBYs love to lampoon as the doom of many a housing project, the upcoming ballot measure actually goes further.

“So much of what has happened when people talk about CEQA reform has been finding ways to exclude projects and efforts from the CEQA review process,” said John Myers, the campaign’s spokesperson. “They have not actually touched the actual underlying 1970 law.”

“That’s what makes it really unique,” Myers added, because the measure would add code to the text of CEQA law, which is housed in California’s Public Resources Code (opens in new tab). 

The ballot measure’s transformative nature is probably why it has the backing of heavy bankrollers, including the Building a Better California PAC, which is backed by Silicon Valley’s elite, like Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen, and The Standard’s Chairman Michael Moritz. It’s the latest ripple — pun very much intended, thanks — of the effort to knock out the CA billionaire tax, the cause célèbre of the Building a Better California PAC. And yes, that’s the same group with the incredible amount of behind-the-scenes drama in their billionaires group chat, which The Standard’s Emily Shugerman recently uncovered. 

The Building a Better California PAC donated $10 million to the committee for the CEQA reform measure, the bulk of its contributions for the last reporting period, which is January through the end of March. 

Environmentalists are already raising their pitchforks (and trowels, and pruners) over the law, with Howard Penn, head of the Planning and Conservation League, telling the Sacramento Bee (opens in new tab) that the measure “cuts the arms and legs off” California’s most important environmental protection. They’d better find some billionaire friends, fast. 

— Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

MAYORAL SENDOFF: Notify your AI assistants to set your calendars, Power Play fans — June 16, 2026, was officially Han Li Day in San Francisco. 

Don’t take my word for it, just ask Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Lurie issued the official proclamation on Tuesday, which was hand-delivered by his press secretary, Charles Lutvak, at Han’s going-away party at Zeitgeist bar that evening. These proclaimed days for notable businesses or San Franciscans aren’t annual, but if you want to set your iCal to celebrate it every year, who would blame you? His last day at The Standard is today.

“The City and County of San Francisco proudly recognizes Han Li,” the mayor’s proclamation reads, for “his reporting has helped bridge the gap between the city’s Chinese-speaking and English-speaking communities, shining a light on the issue of San Francisco’s Chinese community and the role they play in politics and government.”

His vast connections to every political corner in the city are why Han’s party pulled together opposite sides of the political spectrum, from SF Democratic Party Chair Nancy Tung and former SF Republican Party chair Bill Jackson, to Sunset Dunes proponent Lucas Lux and Vin Budhai, founder of the No on Proposition K committee and the recall of Joel Engardio, over the same highway.

“It’s one of the best career decisions of my life, and getting to know everybody, I feel really lucky to be part of this journey,” Han told his friends, colleagues, and supporters at Zeitgeist. “I’ll miss everything and everybody here.”

We’ll miss you too, Han. 

— J. F. R.