Alexis Podesta Confirmed as Co-Conspirator 2 in Newsom’s Former Chief of Staff Public Corruption Probe

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, was arrested by the FBI Wednesday in a public corruption probe. According to the DOJ, Williamson has been indicted and accused of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud to defraud the United States, the Globe reported.

The three-year investigation goes back to 2022,  through 2025, and during the time Williamson was Chief of Staff to Governor Gavin Newsom.

“The indictment outlines a 2022 scheme to siphon $10,000 a month from a dormant campaign account by falsely representing the payments as due for work done by Williamson and the McCluskies. According to the indictment, the co-conspirators defrauded the account of about $225,000 between 2022 and 2024,” Capitol Weekly reported.

The scheme would bill Xavier Becerra’s dormant state campaign account for non-existent consulting services.

The federal indictment says most of the payments were paid to McCluskie’s wife, a political consultant, who had a “no-show job,” and then were deposited into an account by McCluskie had access to.

Xavier Becerra said that the charges by his former “long-serving trusted advisor are a gut punch.”

Gavin Newsom’s office initially denied that the governor knew anything about Williams, and distanced themselves from her. “Under the Trump administration, the DOJ routinely targets the state, which has resulted in us suing the federal administration 46 times,” a Newsom spokesperson said Thursday. But this investigation initiated during the Biden Administration in 2022, .

Attorney Laura Powell posted to X a Politico article which said the governor put Williamson on leave last year when he learned she was being criminally investigated.

Williamson’s attorney McGregor Scott, a former U.S. Attorney, told media Wednesday that the FBI had also asked Williamson to assist with an investigation into Newsom, but she told them she had no knowledge of any wrongdoing on his part.

Two others were named in the indictment: Greg Campbell, a registered lobbyist and lobbying company owner, and Sean McCluskie, former California Deputy Attorney General for then-AG Xavier Becerra, and chief of staff for the former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. The indictment also listed “Co-Conspirator 2 and Co-Conspirator 3.”

Co-Conspirator 2 in the Williamson complaint was only identified as McCluskie’s wife. Now we know she is Alexis Podesta of Podesta Company. “Bill Portanova, Podesta’s attorney, confirmed to The Times that Podesta is the person identified as ‘Co-Conspirator 2’ in charging documents — including McCluskie’s plea agreement, which alleges she funneled the campaign funds to him,” the LA Times reported Thursday.

RedState’s Jen Van Laar was ahead of them on the Podesta identification:

It looks like Co-Conspirator 2 in the Williamson complaint is Alexis Podesta, who served as Secretary of CA's Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency under Gov. Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom. In 2020 Newsom appointed her to the State Compensation Insurance Fund Board of… pic.twitter.com/rQXkQubq8l

— Jennifer Van Laar (@jenvanlaar) November 12, 2025

Podesta’s bio outlines her “vast experience in government,” working on Capitol Hill, as a Cabinet Secretary for the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency for governors Brown and Newsom. She worked for PG&E under Nancy Mcfadden, who went on to be Gov. Jerry Brown’s chief of staff. Podesta worked at The Walt Disney Company, and for U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein. She was appointed by Gov. Newsom to the State Compensation Fund Board.

The California Secretary of State shows the Becerra for State Superintendent of Instruction campaign committee made monthly payments of $10,000 to Alexis Podesta, which ended up totaling $260,000:

The indictment explains how the money from Becerra’s dormant campaign account went to McCluskie via his wife Podesta.

The indictment explains that Sean McCluskie, who had worked with Xavier Becerra in the California Attorney General’s office, went with him to Washington DC when Becerra was named HHS Secretary. The indictment says McCluskie complained about wanting to make more money, so he and Williamson devised the scheme to give McCluskie a stipend from Becerra’s dormant campaign fund, sitting on $1.5 million, which as a cabinet secretary in DC, Becerra was legally prohibited from using.

The Globe posted this indictment graphic in our article Wednesday:

To show just how deliberate this scheme was, McCluskie and his spouse Alexis Podesta, who use different last names, used this as strategy with the law firms hired to file their Fair Political Practices Form 460’s:

Capitol Weekly updated a feature on Dana Williamson in August 2024, from their 2015 Top 100 feature, in which they describe her job as well as her personality and skill set:

“…Newsom is prone to throwing himself into any number of issues, from insurance to mental health to homelessness to education and yada, yada, yada.  
It all blends into a stew that requires a chief who can multitask as well as he can, who knows Sacramento politics inside and out, who has their own gravitas baked in, and who is not afraid to plant a boot into the appropriate backside when needed. And folks, Dana Williamson is that person. A former advisor and cabinet secretary to Gov. Jerry Brown – speaking of challenging personalities – as well as a longtime political strategist behind some of California’s most notable ballot measure campaigns, Williamson manages the controlled fury of Newsomworld with a deft hand. She is loyal without being overly deferential, highly strategic and absolutely unafraid to go heads up with anyone. And as protective as she might be of him and his agenda, she has the thing every great chief of staff has – the willingness to tell the boss things he doesn’t want to hear. That is critical, particularly in that Newsom has traditionally surrounded himself with people who have been with him for years, which Williamson – like Jim DeBoo before her – has not. But she has clearly earned his trust and his ear, and in an environment as fluid and occasionally chaotic as this one, her ability to keep everything calm, in order and moving forward is invaluable. She is the obvious choice for this spot, and picking anyone else would have been just plain dumb.”

Lastly, as we noted Wednesday, I reported in 2018 about Xavier Becerra and Sean McCluskie in hot water:

Becerra has his own troubles in D.C. as he was up to his eyeballs in the House Democratic Caucus Awan Brothers Congressional IT Scandal. Then-Rep. Xavier Becerra was the caucus chairman when he gave a fake server to the cops in order to obstruct their investigation. “The executive director of the Democratic Caucus was Sean McCluskie, who was Becerra’s chief of staff and is now chief deputy attorney general of California,” Daily Caller reporter Luke Rosiak reported in 2017. “The Awans and their associates collected more than $5 million in pay from congressional offices, often drawing chief-of-staff level pay though there is reason to believe many didn’t even show up. The House’s internal probe found they logged into servers they had no affiliation with, used members’ usernames, covered their tracks, and persisted even after being fired.”

Members of the Awan family logged on to the Caucus server 7,000 times without authorization between October 2015 and August 2016, according to a House investigation.

More to come as details become available. Could this be the tip of a very large iceberg?