Newsoms Set Record ‘Quadruple-Dipping’ into Taxpayer Money

On the latest episode of the Drill Down podcast, Adam Andrzejewski, president of OpenTheBooks.com, told co-hosts Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers that CA Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom were paid $1.5 million over the decade to run a non-profit film and school curriculum organization.

The group licenses its films to 5,000 schools across the country, which pay licensing fees to the non-profit. The non-profit doesn’t create the films. That’s done by a for-profit film production company she also owns, which made $1.6 million over the last decade.

“So right there, you’ve got $3 million flowing back into the Newsoms’ pocket,” Andrzejewski said. “The fourth dip here is the governor himself. He stars in many of her films. They encourage people to vote for politicians – like Gavin Newsom – and support the policies that he espouses. They ask students to get involved, and when they do, the Newsoms actually have a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization called ‘California Partners Project,’ where the students can get active. That was created expressly to drive her public policy agenda as the ‘first partner’ of the state of California,” he explained.

Right after he became governor, Newsom established the office of “first partner,” which now has nine staffers and a million-dollar budget.

Andrzejewski continued, “But of course, it wasn’t enough. They established this 501(c)(4) for more funding, more lobbying power, and a way to get the students active.”