California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that President Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate him and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Newsom said in a video statement that federal agents had been contacting family friends and former employees in recent days.
Newsom said the agents were demanding records and “abusing the grand jury process” as part of an effort to find a crime.
“Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets, he’s coming after me because I am considering running for president. Because he hates that I have consistently called him out over and over again for his lies and deceit,” Newsom said.
The governor did not provide specific evidence that Trump personally ordered the investigation or specify which federal agencies were involved. The Guardian has approached the Justice Department for comment. No statement from the department had been released as of Monday evening.
Newsom, who has been governor of California since 2019, is term-limited and cannot run for reelection. He has not formally declared a presidential campaign but has increasingly positioned himself as a national figure and frequent critic of Trump. Trump in recent weeks has escalated attacks on California’s election procedures, making unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in the state’s primary elections.