Ex-Newsom aide pleads guilty in scheme to siphon campaign funds from Xavier Becerra

SACRAMENTO - A former top aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom and gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra pleaded guilty Thursday in a federal fraud case that has roiled California politics and the state's chaotic governor's race.

Dana Williamson, the former aide, entered her plea at the federal courthouse in Sacramento. She faces a maximum sentence of 38 years in prison, according to the plea agreement.

Federal prosecutors had accused Williamson of conspiring to steal $225,000 from a campaign account for Becerra, the secretary of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden.

Williamson faced 23 felony charges related to the scheme and alleged wrongdoing related to fraudulently obtaining a pandemic loan for her consulting business and writing off $1 million in luxury goods and other personal costs as business expenses on her taxes.

On Thursday, Williamson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit bank and wire fraud, one count of subscribing to a false tax return and one count of making false statements to the FBI.

Williamson's indictment did not implicate either Newsom or Becerra, the former California attorney general who served as health and human services secretary from March 2021 until this past January. The indictment describes the co-conspirators as misrepresenting the payments to Becerra so he would approve them. Williamson's attorney, former U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott, confirmed to reporters that the bank and wire fraud plea was related to theft from Becerra's campaign account.

Becerra has denied wrongdoing and says he was not aware of the scheme, which funneled money to his former chief of staff, who took a pay cut to follow him to D.C. The former chief of staff, Sean McCluskie, and another longtime Sacramento political operative, Greg Campbell, pleaded guilty late last year to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud.

Becerra's rivals in the governor's race, where he has recently risen to frontrunner status after former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out amid sexual assault allegations, have argued that he could be indicted in the future if Williamson implicates him as part of her plea agreement with prosecutors.

During a debate on CNN, Republican Steve Hilton explicitly accused Becerra of being involved with the scheme. Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa piled on, suggesting Becerra's proximity to the fraud at the very least raises questions about his involvement.

In an interview on CNN on Monday, Democrat Katie Porter, another of Becerra's rivals, said there was no way to know if Becerra would be implicated in the future as part of a plea agreement. She referenced California's top-two primary system, in which the two candidates who win the most votes in the primary, regardless of party, advance to the general election and noted there is no option for voters to write in additional candidates.

"I don't want to see what happened with Eric Swalwell happen with Xavier Becerra," she told anchor Dana Bash. "At this point, this close to the end of the race with our top two, with no possibility for a write-in, I think it's too big of a risk to take."

If Becerra is the only Democrat who advances to the general election and later is charged with a crime, Porter said that would essentially guarantee a Republican governor in California.

Becerra has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. Prosecutors have described him as a victim, not a perpetrator.

"If I had been involved, the U.S. attorney would have had me in that indictment," Becerra retorted during the CNN debate. "I was not involved."

Voting in California's primary election is already underway, as many Californians have already received their ballots in the mail. Voting ends June 2.

Federal prosecutors alleged that Williamson, McCluskie, McCluskie's wife, Campbell and another operative named Alexis Podesta conspired to funnel money from one of Becerra's dormant campaign account to the McCluskies. The conspirators allegedly told Becerra that the payments were for account maintenance and monitoring, even though no such work was performed. McCluskie's wife and Podesta have not been charged, and Podesta cooperated with prosecutors.

The payments of $10,000 per month eventually added up to $225,000 when they ended in fall 2024, according to the indictment.

Newsom placed Williamson on leave in 2024 after she informed him she was under federal investigation, according to the governor's office.

She initially pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on $500,000 bail last year. Her lawyer, Scott, told the Chronicle at the time that the U.S. attorney's office had first contacted him over a year ago, during President Joe Biden's administration, and asked whether Williamson could "help in some sort of investigation they were conducting of the governor."

Scott said she said she could not help because she had not observed Newsom doing anything wrong.

Scott reiterated that message to reporters after Thursday's hearing, but said he did not know what the Newsom-related investigation was supposedly about. "We never got that far," he said.

A spokesperson for Newsom said his office was not aware of any federal investigation

Becerra told the Chronicle in a statement at the time that the accusations against his former chief of staff were a "gut punch" and that he had cooperated with the investigation.

Jonathan Underland, a spokesman for Becerra, told the Chronicle Thursday that the plea deal reinforces that Becerra was a victim in the scheme.

"He had no idea what was going on. There was a scheme that was designed to deceive him," Underland said. "If he had known what was going on, he would not have let that happen."

Williamson, 53, stood before Chief U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley a few months after undergoing a liver transplant and answered affirmatively when asked if she had ever been treated for drug or alcohol use. Wearing an off-white jacket and loose black slacks, Williamson occasionally dabbed her eyes as she pleaded guilty to the three federal counts, the product of what federal prosecutors and Scott said represented months of negotiations between the two sides. The agreement calls for her and the other conspirators to pay restitution to Becerra's campaign fund.

Williamson allegedly engaged in the scheme while working as a political consultant. She turned her role over to Podesta when she joined Newsom's staff, where she served as his top aide for nearly two years. She previously worked as a top aide on Becerra's 2018 campaign for California attorney general.

After Thursday's hearing, a shaken Williamson entered one elevator and Scott another to address reporters and triage his client's reputation. Scott portrayed McCluskie as the scheme's mastermind, coming up with the idea, hounding his client to participate and declining her offer to pay him out of her own pocket rather than siphon money from Becerra's campaign account. Scott said Williamson ended up using $2,500 of her own money each month to supplement the $7,500 withdrawals from the campaign fund while she was involved, all to help her friend McCluskie.

"She lost money in the arrangement," Scott said outside the federal courthouse.

While Williamson faces a maximum of 38 years in federal prison, Scott said the federal sentencing guidelines call for 2 ½ to three years, and that he will "argue very forcefully" for the minimum given that she has no criminal record.

Scott said the Justice Department refused his request to push the case past June's primary, which he said was customary when he had his two stints as the Eastern District's top federal prosecutor, the last one during President Donald Trump's first term.

"This was a policy that we bent over backwards to honor," he said, citing the case of former Fresno Rep. TJ Fox, whose prosecution Scott delayed until after Fox's 2020 election, which he lost. Fox was sentenced in December to one year in federal prison for wire fraud. "I've lived this policy."

"The charges in this case have been public since November 2025," said Lauren Horwood, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office. "And no candidate that is running for governor has been implicated in any of our charging documents."

The case has unfolded as Trump, a political rival of Newsom, Becerra and Biden, has been calling for his attorney general to prosecute his enemies. But Williamson's indictment says that the investigation began in September 2023, under the Biden administration. At the time, the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California were investigating whether Williamson had improperly obtained a Paycheck Protection Program loan during the COVID-19 pandemic despite being engaged in lobbying activity.

Williamson pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI while she was serving as Newsom's chief of staff. In the plea agreement, she admitted she lied about the scheme to steal Becerra's campaign funds, and also about passing information to a former client to help them in litigation against the state while working in the governor's office.

Williamson's appearance in federal court Thursday coincided with Newsom's final state budget presentation, which happened about a mile away. Newsom said he couldn't comment in detail because he'd only just heard about Williamson's decision to plead guilty.

"I just literally, as I was in the elevator, someone mentioned it. So forgive me for not having the opportunity to get into the details of it," Newsom said. "We will, once I understand exactly what the plea was. But it's hard - I just think of her daughter, but am also mindful of accountability. We've all got to be held to the letter of the law."

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