California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office confirmed he will release years of withheld tax returns on the last possible day of his self-imposed July deadline, raising fresh questions about what took so long and what the filings will show.
Spokesperson Izzy Gardon told The California Post via text message that the records will be made public by Friday, the final day of the month. The confirmation came roughly two weeks after the governor's office first assured the outlet that "the remaining returns will be shared this month." No explanation was offered for why the release was pushed to the last available hours.
Newsom has not publicly released any personal federal tax returns covering years after 2020. He released those 2020 filings back in 2022 and has stayed silent on the gap ever since, despite promising annual disclosures while in office. The delay has become a persistent sore point in Sacramento, made worse by a widening federal investigation into Newsom, his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and his former chief of staff.
In 2019, Newsom signed a California law requiring candidates for governor to publicly disclose five years of federal tax returns just to appear on the state's primary ballot. During his 2018 campaign, he released multiple years of returns dating back to 2011. He drew an explicit contrast between himself and Donald Trump, who refused to release his own taxes before and after his first presidential run in 2016.
But after tax year 2020, the disclosures stopped. No returns for 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, or 2025 have been made public, until now, presumably.
When The California Post pressed Newsom at a news conference earlier this month, the governor deflected. "I know you love taxes," he told reporters. He then added: "And you will have all those new tax returns, because, I have no reason why you haven't gotten them already." When reminded that he had once contrasted himself with Trump on financial transparency, Newsom insisted he had released his taxes "for decades."
That claim is technically true for the years he was on the ballot. It sidesteps the fact that he stopped releasing returns the moment he was no longer running.
Even when Newsom did release tax documents, the process raised eyebrows. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2021 that journalists were given roughly one hour to review a stack of tax documents about two inches thick. They were not permitted to photocopy or photograph the pages.
Whether Newsom will repeat that controlled rollout or simply post the returns online remains unclear. His office has not said. A second spokesperson, Diana Crofts-Pelayo, tried to minimize the significance of the missing filings in an email to The California Post.
Crofts-Pelayo wrote that the returns are "unremarkable and entirely consistent with what Californians already know from his annual Form 700 disclosures." She added that "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."
Framing a basic transparency promise as going "above and beyond" is a notable shift from a governor who once held up tax disclosure as a litmus test for public trust. If the returns are truly unremarkable, the four-year delay in releasing them becomes harder to explain, not easier.
The timing of this disclosure lands in the middle of serious legal trouble inside Newsom's orbit. Federal investigators have been examining both the governor and his wife. One probe is looking specifically into the first partner's taxes, a source told The California Post. The FBI's examination of Jennifer Siebel Newsom's tax filings has added a financial dimension to an investigation that already carried political weight.
Newsom has called the federal probes "a witchhunt," accusing the Trump administration of weaponizing the Justice Department against a likely 2028 presidential contender. That framing has a problem: the investigation did not begin under the current administration. As reporting has documented, the FBI launched its inquiry while Joe Biden was still in office.
Newsom's political-persecution defense grew harder to sustain in May, when Dana Williamson, his former chief of staff, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and lying to the FBI. Williamson is scheduled to be sentenced September 17. The guilty plea from someone that close to the governor raised immediate questions about what the governor knew and when he knew it.
The last returns Newsom made public, covering tax year 2020, showed that he and Siebel Newsom earned nearly $1.5 million and paid about $480,000 in federal taxes. Most of the couple's income came from Newsom's ownership interests in wineries, restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality businesses.
Those businesses were placed into a blind trust after Newsom became governor. Because of that arrangement, the returns no longer identify which specific businesses generated income or losses. The blind trust structure means that even when the new returns are released, the public may see dollar totals without knowing where the money came from.
That limited visibility matters more now than it did in 2020. The federal investigation, the Williamson guilty plea, and the probe into Siebel Newsom's finances have all raised the stakes around Newsom's personal financial disclosures. The governor has also retained a high-profile defense attorney as the federal probe has tightened, not the move of a man who considers the whole thing a political stunt.
Democrats released Trump's tax returns, covering 2015 through 2020, in 2022, before handing control of the House to Republicans. Newsom cheered that kind of forced disclosure. He signed a state law mandating it. He made it a centerpiece of his political brand.
Then he stopped releasing his own returns for four years, offered no explanation, and waited until the last day of a self-imposed deadline to follow through on a promise his own office had to be reminded about by reporters. His spokesperson's claim that the returns are "unremarkable" may turn out to be true. But a governor who has cried political persecution over a probe that started under a president from his own party does not get the benefit of the doubt on transparency.
Accountability is not something you demand from your opponents and then quietly skip when it applies to you. Newsom built his brand on that principle. His own record is now the test.