☕️ JELLY PROBES ☙ Wednesday, June 17, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

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Governor Gavin films a basement hostage video to announce he’s under federal investigation, then heroically declines to mention what for. His own leaked memo doesn’t know either. 

JEFF CHILDERS

JUN 17READ IN APP

Good morning, C&C family, it’s Wednesday! Your special California edition roundup today includes: a sitting governor who called a press conference to announce that he is, personally, a criminal suspect— a bold marketing strategy normally avoided by criminal suspects; a four-minute-and-forty-two-second basement selfie video, shot in a lighting style we’ll call Hostage, in which Newsom bravely reveals he’s under federal investigation while heroically declining to mention for what; a leaked talking-points memo whose first question is “what is he being investigated for?” and whose first answer is —and I am not making this up— essentially “good question, ask the DOJ”; millions that mysteriously wandered into his wife’s feminism-themed nonprofit and somehow never wandered back out; a Native American tribe that donated nearly two million dollars at right about the moment Gavin took its side in a casino fight, which is either a remarkable coincidence or a remarkable non-coincidence; a former chief of staff who just pleaded guilty to Fraud and Lying, which would make an excellent name for a punk rock band; and the governor’s central thesis that the most powerful man on Earth is personally terrified of him, despite said man not appearing on any ballot Gavin will ever reach, even on his best day. Grab a glove and your petroleum jelly. It’s probing time.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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The Empire of Fraud is collapsing. The man who locked Californians in their homes, shuttered their businesses, and kept their kids out of school —while dining maskless at the French Laundry— is now claiming he’s the victim. Yesterday, the LA Times ran a story consuming more media oxygen this week than even the fanciful imaginings over the Iran deal’s terms, headlined, “Newsom seeks political advantage in probe he says Trump ordered.” I wonder whether the innuendo was accidental. Trump ordered Newsom’s probe. Alrighty then. Bend over and cough.

CLIP: Governor Newsom’s poorly lit, rambling confession of a federal investigation that nobody else has publicly alleged (4:42).

Dressed like the keynote speaker at a morticians’ conference about to deliver an off-color joke about embalming fluid, in a (selfie?) video apparently filmed in a dark basement, California Governor Gavin Newsom —one of the few surviving pandemic Lockdown Queens— “proudly” announced on Monday that he is under investigation by the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service.

“Today, my wife and I joined Donald Trump’s hit list,” Newsom admits in the clip. “He has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us.” He said he found out because investigators have been questioning, probing, and even arresting his friends and neighbors. For at least a year.So … why pick now to come out of the closet?

Regular readers will remember that we covered last year the swirl of investigations and criminal prosecutions of staff, activists, and officials surrounding Newsom. Gossip and speculation about whether the governor himself is a target has been a regular feature of Sacramento politics for at least that long. The DOJ has never said.

🔥 The LA Times scared up an expert, a professor of political science at UC San Diego who narrated Newsom’s unlikely brilliance at turning a federal criminal investigation into a branding opportunity. “He seems to be wearing this as a badge of honor because his brand is being the strongest opponent of Donald Trump,” explained professor Thad Kousser.

Maybe it will work with the partisan Democrat base. All that the base cares about is standing up to Trump, so if Newsom says he’s being investigated —normally a pretty awful selling point— then donors like him that much better. Call it the Graham Platner effect.

Maybe the most remarkable feature of Newsom’s aimless five-minute rant —which was nearly unquotable due to its fuzzy insubstantiality— was a conspicuous omission. Newsom never actually said what he or his wife Jennifer were being investigated for. In a similar startling development, yesterday, Axios covered the story and linked a leaked talking-points memo that Newsom apparently sent in private to national Democrats.

Look at this! The very first entry in Newsom’s leaked memo’s Q&A section:

The very first Q&A question was a good start: “What exactly is the DOJ investigating?” But the answer was: no answer. “That’s a question Trump’s Department of Justice needs to answer.” But why? Does he really want the DOJ answering that?

Anyway. Newsom clearly knew that the very first thing anyone —even his allies— would wonder after watching his badly produced video is: what exactly has he been accused of? He deflected to the DOJ. But DOJ has never admitted there’s an investigation in the first place, as Newsom obviously knows, so he’s chucking the question right into a narrative black hole.

One can understand his reluctance. One doesn’t want to start giving prosecutors ideas they might not come up with on their own. But it backfired, at least to the extent that it has forced even friendly corporate media to fill in the blanks by suggesting possibilities.

🔥 Gavin’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, has apparently been involved in some sketchy NGO shenanigans that washed money into the couple’s personal finances more efficiently than the senior wait staff at the French Laundry could. Some of that money came from donors who later benefited from Newsom’s decisions. Which is not just potential bribery but also tax fraud—precisely what they nabbed Al Capone for.

Bravely empowering women, one wire transfer at a time

Here, for just one example, is how CNN veered into speculation about Newsom’s Empire of Fraud, and even, dare I say it, did some investigative journalism:

Newsom could have offered a strawman explanation, however silly, and kept control of the narrative. They claim I’m a warlock, but I never went to Hogwarts or owned a wand. But this … gossamer nothingness?

Inviting even friendly media sources to figure out for themselves what the investigation is all about seems like an unforced error.

“This is something that could lead to other elements that blow up, so there’s a risk,” David McCuan, a Sonoma State political science professor, told the LA Times. “It’s a long-running game,” McCuan added. “It’s just the Newsom first couple has perfected it and moved it forward.”

My best guess as to why Newsom refused to say what he’s being investigated for is that his lawyers told him not to talk about it. And so the media is filling in the holes.

🔥 Over the previous few months, the Sacramento Bee and others have reported over $3.7 million flowing from one of Jennifer’s several non-profits into Jennifer’s for-profit company (she hired herself) from the NGO ecosystem, while large donors like PG&E, AT&T, Kaiser, Blue Shield, and others got large contracts, regulatory forbearance, or other preferential treatment from the state.

Other platforms reported that Gavin personally solicited donations to his wife’s companies. In one case, he ultimately routed another $4 million into Jennifer’s charitable film company, which promotes feminism. In another looming scandal, a tribe donated $1.8 million to Jennifer’s charities, at the exact same time that Gavin conveniently took the tribe’s side against a different tribe in a casino dispute.

Don’t cancel me, I’m not alleging anything. This is all the stuff corporate media keeps surfacing. Media, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Since neither Newsom nor the DOJ is saying what Newsom might be under investigation for, the media is being forced to do something that, back in the old days, it used to do naturally: investigate.

My analysis is that Newsom is not playing 4-D chess badly. It seems much more likely that something forced his hand. Something like finding out a key witness is cooperating, somebody turned state’s evidence, or that he stupidly left the political murder weapon on top of the dryer at the grift laundromat. Here’s the summary of my evidence:

1. Public knowledge that the DOJ investigation was ongoing is not new (at least, in California politics) or even stretches back to the Biden era. (C&C covered it last year.)
2. Gavin’s video was poorly produced, suggesting it was rushed rather than carefully planned. (Newsom’s leaked “talking points memo” also has a rushed look about it; I’d say that it was AI-generated except that AI could have done a better job.)
3. The ‘campaign’ left a gaping narrative vacuum for media to fill.
4. Events seem to be overtaking the oleaginous governor. Yesterday, the Sacramento Bee reported Newsom was fined for violations related to many of the alleged ‘donations’: “Newsom fined by campaign finance watchdog just prior to DOJ probe announcement.”
5. The governor’s inner circle is compromised and may be cooperating. Last month, Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, pleaded guilty to bank fraud and wire conspiracy.
6. In his selfie video, Newsom said FBI and IRS agents were knocking on doors of “family friends and former employees” last week, demanding records.
7. If this were a narrative strategy he’d been working on for months, he’d have a clear origin story, trial balloons, surveys, and media consensus lined up before he went public.

And one more thing— there is zero evidence that Newsom’s narrative is working, even with Democrats. During 2021–2023, whenever Biden’s prosecutors moved against Trump, we saw wall‑to‑wall coverage all over social media from real voters: rally‑goers on camera, man‑on‑the‑street interviews in diners, memes, MAGA folks protesting outside courthouses and vowing, “this makes me support Trump even more,” “they’re only going after him because he is in the way,” “this is bulls—t,” et cetera.

At the time, polls showed over 75% of Republicans believed that the federal charges against Trump were fake and politically motivated. His primary numbers improved after the indictments. So … where are Gavin’s polls? At the same moment his “experts” are insisting this scandal is rocket fuel for his presidential campaign, the one thing conspicuously absent from the record is any actual measurement of whether voters actually buy his effeminiate martyrdom story.

In other words, Newsom and his elite allies are trying to steal Trump’s 2021-2023 formula, as if it were just a secret recipe of talking points that can bake corruption slime into consensus cookies— but it isn’t working. The cookies are burning into toxic sludge. Meanwhile, Democrats who cheered weaponization against Trump for four years are failing to convince anyone of a new “tyranny” narrative.

The only people claiming Californians “relish” the governor’s attacks on Trump are his own allies, college professors, and the same parrot-like political analysts who always plug his policies. Ordinary Newsom fans —voters— don’t appear in these stories at all.

So here are our two choices: either (1) believe the governor’s simplistic “I’m the real victim here” explanation —Trump forced me to defend myself in public— or (2) consider instead that Trump forced Newsom to attempt a humiliating limited hangout without actually hanging anything out except the lame excuse that “Trump fears me.”

I think it’s the second one. I highly doubt Trump fears Newsom. Trump isn’t even on the 2028 ballot. What’s he supposed to be afraid of?

In other words, Newsom, feeling the probe drive in a little further than he expected, flinched and tried to turn a wince into a war cry.

Have a terrific Wednesday! As we will see tomorrow, DOJ/FBI breathing down Gavin’s neck isn’t even close to the flood of prosecutions and investigations coming down the pike. Don’t miss another delightful roundup of essential news and caffeinated commentary.