California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff accepted a plea deal Thursday in a federal fraud probe that has rattled the race for the state’s next leader.
Prosecutors accused Dana Williamson of helping to siphon roughly $225,000 from the dormant state-level campaign account of then-Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a former client of her political consulting firm and now a candidate for governor.
Williamson then helped funnel the money to the wife of Becerra’s deputy at the federal agency in a bid to pad the family’s bank account after the aide, Sean McCluskie, had complained about taking a pay cut to work for the federal government, prosecutors charge.
Williamson sought to distance herself from the arrangement as she joined Newsom’s administration in 2023, and she left the governor’s office in late 2024 as federal officials investigated the scheme.
McCluskie and a prominent lobbyist, Greg Campbell, pleaded guilty to related charges late last year and are awaiting sentencing.
The case has rocked California politics, ensnaring deeply connected operatives who have moved back and forth for years between advising the state’s Democratic leaders and lobbying for blue chip companies in Sacramento.
While Newsom and Becerra have not been accused of wrongdoing, the allegations against aides who were once top deputies has cast clouds over them.
Becerra has faced questions as he campaigns for governor about how he could have missed the anomalous payments from his own accounts.
Democratic rivals have argued that it would be risky for voters to advance Becerra in the June 2 primary election to the general election in November as the case plays out and federal prosecutors sit on a trove of evidence, including wiretaps.
“It was his campaign account. He signed off on it. It was his 25-year chief of staff who was receiving the money via this scheme,” former Rep. Katie Porter (D), another candidate for governor, told CNN on May 11.
Becerra, however, has called the allegations against his former confidants a “gut punch” and maintained during a debate earlier this month that he wasn’t involved in the scheme.
“If I had been involved, the US attorney would’ve had me in that indictment,” he said on CNN.
Williamson’s plea agreement, filed in federal court in Sacramento on Thursday, calls for her to pay restitution for helping steal from Becerra’s campaign account.
Under the deal, she is pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, one count of subscribing to a false tax return, and one count of making false statements.
In addition to charges that she helped drain money from Becerra’s old campaign accounts, federal officials also accused Williamson of cheating on her taxes.
Authorities allege she claimed more than $1 million in business deductions on her taxes for personal expenses, such as private jet travel, birthday trips to Mexico, and designer handbags. The longtime political operator also made false statements to investigators and forged documents when pressed by federal officials on a loan her firm received under the Covid-era Paycheck Protection Program, prosecutors charge.
California’s ethics regulator also opened an investigation into Williamson following accusations she used her role as the governor’s chief of staff to intervene in state litigation against a company previously represented by Campbell’s lobbying firm.