DOJ Is Investigating Newsom and His Wife After Comey, James, and Schiff

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on June 15, 2026, that the Justice Department is investigating him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and accused President Trump of directing it. “Today, my wife and I joined Donald Trump’s hit list. He has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us,” Newsom wrote on X.

Newsom’s account lines up with reporting from NBC News, the New York Times, and CNBC, which said the investigation is being run out of Sacramento and may predate his public statement. NBC reported it sits in the Eastern District of California, whose U.S. Attorney is Eric Grant.

One source told NBC that Siebel Newsom is under investigation over her taxes, and other reporting points to her nonprofit work. The focus of any inquiry into the governor himself is unclear, and no charging document has been made public. The White House referred questions to the DOJ, which declined to comment.

What Newsom Says Is Happening

Newsom described agents pressuring the people around him. Federal investigators have “knocked on the doors of family friends and former employees,” he said in a video, and demanded records and “random documents.” They are acting “not because they’ve found a crime, but because they’re trying to find one.”

He cast the move as retaliation for his criticism of Trump and his potential run for president, and said investigators had turned to his wife. “If they can’t intimidate me, they’ll go after the mother of our children,” Newsom said, calling her “a public servant” who “has done nothing wrong.” Both deny wrongdoing. “Donald Trump picked the wrong target. We have nothing to hide.”

Newsom also turned a label Trump has long used back on him. Where Trump has spent years casting investigations into himself as political persecution, Newsom branded this one a weaponization of the Justice Department and called Trump “the most corrupt president in American history.”

The Pattern Around the Newsom Probe

The investigation follows a documented run of federal cases against people Trump has publicly named as enemies. The DOJ has indicted or investigated former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Sen. Adam Schiff of California. In each case, Trump had publicly urged the department to act, and in each case the target has denied wrongdoing.

The administration has also churned the prosecutors’ offices that bring these cases. In the Eastern District of Virginia, the court handling the Comey and James prosecutions, the U.S. Attorney resigned under pressure and Trump installed Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney with no prosecutorial experience, who presented the Comey case to a grand jury herself. A judge dismissed that case in November 2025 after ruling Halligan had not been lawfully appointed, and when judges named a career replacement, the administration removed him. The same dynamic runs through these cases, where career prosecutors keep walking away from charges they say the evidence does not support.

The thread reaches Newsom’s own circle. The same Sacramento district recently secured a guilty plea from his former chief of staff, Dana Williamson. In a separate matter, the DOJ opened a criminal probe of E. Jean Carroll, the writer a jury found Trump had sexually abused.

Trump’s Appointees Say It Out Loud

The administration has not hidden the logic. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters in April that it is “appropriate” for the president to direct investigations. Blanche got the job after Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom the administration faulted for failing to deliver prosecutions of Trump’s targets.

Trump has signaled the intent for a year. He endorsed arresting Newsom during clashes over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, telling reporters “I think it would be a great thing,” and he routinely calls the governor “Newscum.” The administration also tried, and failed, to indict six members of Congress over a video reminding service members not to obey unlawful orders, after Trump called the video “seditious behavior, punishable by death.”

Is It Legal to Investigate a Rival?

There is no rule that makes an investigation illegal simply because the target is a political rival. The legal questions are narrower. They turn on whether prosecutors had a legitimate factual basis, whether charges were brought selectively or vindictively, and whether the president improperly directed the Justice Department for partisan or personal reasons.

Two legal defenses exist, and both are hard to win. A selective prosecution claim requires proof that someone was singled out for an improper reason while similar people were left alone. A vindictive prosecution claim requires proof the government retaliated against someone for exercising a legal right.

The Justice Department’s own policy says prosecutorial power must be used free from partisan consideration. But the Supreme Court’s 2024 immunity decision in Trump v. United States makes politically directed investigations harder to challenge, not easier.

The upshot is narrow. A politically motivated probe is not automatically unlawful, but it becomes legally vulnerable if the evidence shows it was launched to punish opposition rather than to enforce the law.

Why This Matters

A justice system that investigates people for their politics rather than their conduct stops being a justice system. The common thread in these cases is not evidence. It is that each target criticized or opposed the president, who called for action and got it. Prosecutors keep resigning rather than file charges they say the proof does not support.

The check on this is Congress, which controls the Justice Department’s budget and its oversight. So far it has mostly watched.

What You Can Do

Demand Senate Judiciary oversight hearings. Tell your senators to put politically directed prosecutions on the record and question DOJ leadership under oath. Use the letter and call script below.
Ask your House member to defend career prosecutors. Press them to support protections for line attorneys who refuse cases that lack evidence, and to oppose funding for politically targeted investigations.
Track the retaliation. Protect Democracy’s retaliatory action tracker documents the federal cases brought against Trump’s named critics, so the pattern is visible in one place.
Read the pattern, not just the headline. Our brief on how the DOJ built a two-tier justice system lays out the cases side by side.