Governor Gavin Newsom finally released four years of tax returns, but only after hand-picking which reporters could see them, banning copies, and skipping the event entirely.
Newsom's office invited a small group of media outlets, including The New York Times and Politico, to review 718 pages of tax filings covering 2021 through 2024 at a private event in Sacramento on Thursday. Reporters were restricted to pen and paper. No copies allowed. Newsom himself did not show up to answer questions. Findings were embargoed until Friday morning, when the selected outlets published what they could scribble down.
The California Post, which had pressed Newsom for months to release the documents, was not invited. Newsom's office did not even alert the outlet that other media had already been contacted and had reviewed the filings.
For a governor who signed a 2019 law requiring gubernatorial candidates to disclose five years of federal tax returns before appearing on the primary ballot, and who pledged to keep releasing his own returns annually, the gap between promise and practice is stark. Newsom had not publicly released any returns covering years after 2020 until Friday.
Republican lawmakers wasted no time calling out the process. U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley, a former California state legislator, told The Post:
"If the governor is truly committed to transparency, it makes little sense to pick and choose who that transparency extends to."
Kiley added that the release fit a familiar pattern with the governor.
"This appears to be another Newsom story where the factual details are very different from the self-proclaimed headline."
U.S. Rep. James Gallagher was blunter. He compared the governor's transparency record to his homelessness policy, telling The Post:
"He talks big about things but 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 congressional candidate in California's 30th District, framed the issue in terms any voter could understand: "If you want voters to trust you as a steward of their tax dollars, you should welcome that level of scrutiny."
The financial picture that emerged from the restricted review raises its own set of questions. From 2022 through 2024, Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, reported annual income ranging between $1.7 million and $2 million. In 2021, the couple reported $3.5 million in taxable income, boosted by roughly $1 million from the sale of their home in Marin County.
Most of the couple's income came from winery, restaurant, and hospitality businesses that Newsom placed in a blind trust. But the returns reportedly do not identify which individual businesses generated profits or losses, leaving the public unable to determine which ventures are making money and which are not.
Newsom's gubernatorial salary, approximately $200,000 annually as reflected in the filings, has since grown to $246,000. He also collected $70,000 in author income in 2023 and $75,000 in 2024, tied to his memoir.
The couple paid household staff nearly $200,000 and donated between $40,000 and $67,000 to charity each year during the four-year period. Over those four years, they paid nearly $2.8 million in federal income taxes and about $500,000 in California income taxes.
One line item stood out. In 2022, the Newsoms donated Armani business attire originally purchased for approximately $45,000 to an unnamed restorative justice nonprofit in Oakland. On their tax filings, they estimated the donated clothing's thrift-store value at $4,900. That is the figure they used for their charitable deduction, a fraction of the original price tag, but still a write-off on designer clothes most Californians could never afford.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom's own financial footprint drew attention as well. Her feminist film production company, Girls Club Entertainment, lost about $37,000 in 2022. That same year, she reported just $11,700 in earnings from the venture. She collected $150,000 or more annually from a separate organization, The Representation Project, a nonprofit she runs. The FBI has been examining Siebel Newsom's taxes, and a source previously told The Post that one federal inquiry focuses specifically on her finances.
The timing of the release is impossible to separate from the legal cloud hanging over the governor. Newsom disclosed last month that he and Siebel Newsom are subjects of a federal investigation. He has accused the Trump administration of weaponizing the Justice Department against him, a claim that conveniently ignores the investigation's origins. As previously reported, the probe began under the Biden administration, not under Trump.
Newsom's former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, 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 September 17. The guilty plea from someone that close to the governor, his own former chief of staff, makes the restricted, copy-free, no-questions-taken format of the tax return release all the more conspicuous.
Newsom has also retained a high-profile defense attorney as the federal probe has tightened. For a governor who frames himself as a champion of openness, hiring elite legal counsel while releasing financial documents under conditions designed to limit scrutiny sends a contradictory message.
Earlier this month, when a reporter from The Post brought up taxes, Newsom responded: "I know you love taxes." He added: "And you will have all those new tax returns, because, I have no reason why you haven't gotten them already." His own surprise that the returns had not yet been shared suggests either a disconnect with his own staff or a performance for the cameras.
Spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo had previously told The Post the returns were "unremarkable and entirely consistent with what Californians already know from his annual Form 700 disclosures." She added that Newsom "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."
If the documents are truly unremarkable, the restrictions make even less sense. Unremarkable returns do not require 718 pages to be walled off from public download, reviewed only by handpicked reporters armed with pens, and embargoed until a Friday morning news dump. That is not how transparency works. That is how damage control works.
The couple's 2025 returns were not included. They filed for an extension and expect to complete those filings in October. Newsom, widely described as a likely 2028 presidential contender, will face continued pressure to make the full documents publicly available, not just viewable under controlled conditions by a curated guest list.
A governor who signed a law demanding tax transparency from candidates, then spent years withholding his own returns, then released them only to reporters he chose, under rules he set, without showing up to face a single question, that is not transparency. That is a man who wants the headline without the accountability.