Gavin Newsom’s sham “release” of his long-awaited tax returns has been slammed an insult to transparency after the governor sneakily slipped the documents to handpicked new organizations.
After promising to make four years of tax records public, The California Post can reveal that the governor only permitted a small group of favored media outlets to pore over 718 pages of documents while forbidding them from making copies.
Newsom — who is currently facing a potential corruption investigation by the FBI along with his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom — was not present to take any questions at the carefully managed private media event Thursday in Sacramento.
Media outlets including The New York Times and Politico, whose reporters were ordered to use only a pen and paper to take notes on the documents, agreed to publish their findings Friday morning.
The shady release came after a pressure campaign by The Post — which was not invited to review the records — forced Newsom to stubbornly commit to their release.
“If the governor is truly committed to transparency, it makes little sense to pick and choose who that transparency extends to,” US Rep. Kevin Kiley, a former state legislator, told The Post.
“This appears to be another Newsom story where the factual details are very different from the self-proclaimed headline.”
US Rep. James Gallagher told The Post: “Newsom’s transparency is a lot like his homelessness policy — it leaves a lot to be desired.”
“He talks big about things abut never actually delivers. This is another instance of that — only allowing select people and only pen and paper. This isn’t real transparency. There are still a lot of questions where Gavin’s money comes from.”
Scott Meyers, a GOP candidate for Congress in California’s 30th Congressional District, added The Post: “If you want voters to trust you as a steward of their tax dollars, you should welcome that level of scrutiny.”
Notes taken by the select media outlets showed that Newsom and and his wife paid household staff nearly $200,000 and wrote off $45,000 in Armani clothing, while raking in $1.7 million and $2 million annually from 2022 through 2024.
Newsom — who tried to paint himself as the underdog in his recent memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry” — collected $70,000 in author income in 2023 and another $75,000 in 2024.
In 2021, the couple reported $3.5 million in taxable income thanks to $1 million made off the sale of their home in tony Marin County.
Newsom’s income remained relatively consistent from 2021 to 2024, according to the Associated Press.
His roughly $200,000 annual gubernatorial salary in tax filings, which has since grown to $246,000, accounted for only a fraction of the family’s earnings. Most of their income came from winery, restaurant and hospitality businesses that he placed into a blind trust after taking office. The returns reportedly do not identify which individual businesses generated profits or losses.
The returns also show Siebel Newsom’s feminist film production company hemorrhaging money. In 2022, Girls Club Entertainment lost about $37,000, while Siebel Newsom reported earnings of just $11,700 from the business, the Times reported. Meanwhile, Siebel Newsom has been collecting $150,000 or more each year from her nonprofit, The Representation Project, to promote those films and other initiatives.
In 2022, the Newsoms donated Armani business attire they originally purchased for about $45,000 to an Oakland restorative justice nonprofit. On their tax filings, they estimated the clothes’ thrift-store value at $4,900, according to the Times.
Overall, the Newsoms donated between $40,000 and $67,000 to charity each year during the four-year period.
The couple paid nearly $2.8 million in federal income taxes and about $500,000 in California income taxes over the four-year period covered by the filings, according to the Times.
The governor has long argued elected officials should publicly disclose their finances. During his successful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, Newsom released multiple years of tax returns dating back to 2011. After taking office, he signed a 2019 law requiring candidates for governor to publicly disclose five years of federal income tax returns before appearing on California’s primary election ballot. He also pledged to continue releasing his own returns annually while in office.
Until Friday, however, he had not publicly released tax returns covering years after 2020.
Newsom himself appeared surprised earlier this month that the newer returns had not already been released when asked about them by The Post.
“I know you love taxes,” the governor joked before pivoting to criticize President Donald Trump.
When reminded that he had often contrasted himself with Trump on financial transparency, Newsom insisted he had released his taxes “for decades.”
“And you will have all those new tax returns, because — I have no reason why you haven’t gotten them already,” he said.
Earlier this month, Newsom’s office told The Post that returns would be shared by the end of July, and spokesperson Izzy Gardon confirmed Thursday they would be released Friday. The governor’s office did not alert The Post that other media outlets had already been contacted and reviewed the filings.
Newsom’s office did not release returns for tax year 2025 because the couple filed for an extension and expects to complete those returns in October.
The governor’s office repeatedly insisted there was nothing unusual in the filings.
“They’re unremarkable and entirely consistent with what Californians already know from his annual Form 700 disclosures,” spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo previously told The Post.
“The governor publicly released his tax returns while he was on the ballot and is happy to go above and beyond by releasing the remaining years as well.”
The returns attracted heightened attention after Newsom disclosed last month that he and Siebel Newsom were subjects of a federal investigation, which the governor has described as politically motivated.
A source previously told The Post that one federal inquiry is examining Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s taxes.
Federal investigators also separately investigated Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, who pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return and lying to the FBI. Williamson is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 17.
Newsom has accused the Trump administration of weaponizing the Justice Department against a likely 2028 presidential contender.
