A Democratic insider appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to a paid state board secretly recorded conversations for the FBI beginning in June 2024, serving as a confidential informant inside the governor's own political orbit. The disclosure identifies Alexis Podesta, a 45-year-old Sacramento lobbyist and former state agency secretary, as the cooperating witness whose wire helped federal investigators cast a sprawling net across California's capital.
Podesta has been identified as "Co-Conspirator 2" in the federal indictment of Dana Williamson, Newsom's former chief of staff. She has not been charged with a crime. Her attorney, Bill Portanova, acknowledged to media outlets that she began cooperating with federal investigators after uncovering what he characterized as wrongdoing by others, the New York Post reported.
Williamson's attorney, McGregor Scott, himself a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, confirmed the arrangement bluntly.
"Alexis wore a wire, and Dana did not."
That single sentence, reported by Newsmax, reframes the entire Sacramento corruption probe. It means someone inside Newsom's circle was recording conversations for the FBI for at least a year before the investigation became public, and that the probe's reach extended far beyond its original target.
Podesta's résumé reads like a directory of California's Democratic establishment. She served as director of scheduling for the late U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She held roles at PG&E and the Walt Disney Co. She worked in Gov. Jerry Brown's office as director of external affairs, director of international affairs, and chief of protocol before Brown elevated her to secretary of the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, a post she held from 2017 to 2020.
When she left state government in 2020, she launched the Podesta Company, a Sacramento lobbying and government affairs firm. That same year, Newsom appointed her to the board of the State Compensation Insurance Fund, a position that pays nearly $61,000 a year from taxpayer funds.
She has also served on the board of cannabis company Body and Mind Inc. and as an adviser to Pacaso, a luxury vacation-home startup. She was a member of Chief, an executive networking organization. Her fingerprints were everywhere in California's political and corporate world, which is precisely what made her so useful to the FBI.
The federal indictment alleges Podesta took over management of a dormant campaign account belonging to former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra after Williamson joined Newsom's administration. Prosecutors allege the account was then used to funnel roughly $225,000 through a series of sham consulting payments that ultimately benefited Sean McCluskie, Becerra's former chief of staff.
Williamson pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and making false statements to the FBI, Breitbart reported. The guilty plea confirmed the core of the government's case, and it came from the very person whose attorney disclosed the wire.
Neither Becerra nor McCluskie has been publicly identified as charged or under investigation in connection with the scheme. The indictment names Podesta only as a co-conspirator, not a defendant.
Podesta's covert cooperation explains a mystery that had unsettled Sacramento's political class for months: why so many insiders received FBI notification letters informing them that their phone conversations had been intercepted, even people with no apparent connection to Williamson.
Republican Assemblymember Josh Hoover of Folsom described the scope, as the New York Post separately reported:
"A lot of people received letters essentially informing us that there were certain periods of time where the FBI was given access to follow phone calls."
Hoover did not hold back about what the probe signals for the Newsom administration.
"All of this stuff just raises so many questions. What is going on in this administration?"
It is a fair question. When a sitting governor's own appointee is wearing a wire for the FBI inside his political circle, the standard talking points about "personnel matters" stop being adequate.
Newsom's office declined to comment on why Podesta remains on the State Compensation Insurance Fund board, calling it a personnel matter. That non-answer deserves scrutiny. Podesta is identified in a federal indictment as a co-conspirator. She recorded conversations for the FBI for at least a year. She continues to collect nearly $61,000 annually from California taxpayers for her board seat.
And the governor's office treats this as routine human resources.
Newsom himself is now the subject of a separate federal investigation. He disclosed publicly that the DOJ is investigating him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The Breitbart report noted that the investigation expanded based on whistleblower complaints related to their personal finances, with allegations that Siebel Newsom diverted over $3 million from her charity for personal use.
Newsom has accused the Trump administration of political targeting. But the Podesta wire operation began in June 2024, months before the current administration took office. The timeline undercuts the political-persecution narrative before it gets off the ground.
The corruption probe lands at a moment when California's Democratic establishment can least afford it. Newsom has spent recent months positioning himself as a national figure, sparring with the Trump administration on everything from immigration to trade policy. That posture becomes harder to maintain when your former chief of staff has pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges and your own appointee was the one wearing the wire.
The probe also raises questions about the broader culture of Sacramento's revolving door. Podesta moved seamlessly from government service to lobbying to a paid state board appointment, a path that is entirely legal but that creates exactly the kind of overlapping relationships federal investigators find interesting. Her lobbying firm launched the same year Newsom put her on the insurance fund board. She was simultaneously a lobbyist, a state appointee, and, it turns out, an FBI informant.
Democrats are already scrambling to build a 2028 bench, and Newsom has been widely discussed as a potential contender. A federal corruption investigation centered on his own administration complicates that calculus considerably.
Significant questions hang over this story. The specific charges in the Williamson indictment beyond the guilty plea have not been fully detailed in public reporting. The nature and scope of the separate Newsom investigation remain unclear. Whether Becerra or McCluskie face any legal exposure is unknown.
Perhaps most important: what exactly did Podesta record? The FBI does not wire up a cooperating witness for casual conversation. The bureau sought, and apparently obtained, evidence it considered valuable enough to justify a months-long covert operation inside the governor's political network.
Williamson's attorney, Scott, drew a sharp line: his client wore no wire and declined to cooperate because she had no information on Newsom. The implication is that Podesta did have such information, or at least the FBI believed she could obtain it.
The California political world is watching closely. When the FBI plants a wire inside a governor's orbit and the governor's former chief of staff pleads guilty to federal fraud, the word "personnel matter" does not begin to cover it.
Sacramento's power brokers spent years building a machine. Now one of their own has handed the FBI the recordings to prove how it worked.
