EXCLUSIVE — Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has veered into shaky political territory by “consistently” engaging with the Chinese Communist Party and selling out his state and country multiple times, according to explosive claims in a new book.
In Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All, which will be released Tuesday, authors Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter take a microscope to the governor’s cozy relationship with Beijing.
They point to at least three instances in which Newsom, an early 2028 Democratic White House front-runner, sided with or aided people with ties to the notorious CCP.
U.S.-China relations expert Gordon Chang told the Washington Examiner that while “China’s regime has infiltrated both political parties,” it is the Democratic Party in California that has “a special problem because it has viewed Chinese-Americans as a rich source of votes and this group has maintained troubling ties to Communist Party front organizations. This means the California Democratic Party has troubling ties with the Party.”
“Gavin Newsom, who has so much power to help China, has been a target of front activities, and his left-wing politics have made it easy for Beijing to exploit the situation,” Chang added.
One of the instances in the book involves Newsom’s 2022 veto of a bill that would have prohibited foreign governments from purchasing or leasing agricultural land in California.
Senate Bill 1084, authored by state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, would have also created an annual report from the California Department of Food and Agriculture that would list how much agricultural land is still owned by foreign governments. According to Hurtado, more than 3% of all of California’s agricultural land has international owners — an amount that grows each year.
Newsom vetoed the bill, claiming it was unnecessary because the U.S. Department of Agriculture already keeps track of the data. He also said the process would be too arduous.
Crabtree and McFatter claim that both reasons are “bogus.”
They argue Newsom’s reasoning that keeping up with foreign investments would be too difficult flies in the face of other first-in-the-nation type moves California has made, including the state’s climate bill, which requires large corporations to disclose their carbon footprint. They also point to Newsom signing a law that would force venture capital firms to annually disclose diversity data of their workers.
“In other words, government data collection is easily funded and achieved if it’s for the oppressive monitoring of Californians; meanwhile, foreigners get a free pass,” the book reads. “Moreover, if Newsom really believed that it’s dangerous to let foreign governments purchase California farmland, he would be prepared to do all the ‘arduous’ data collection needed to prevent it.”
The authors also take issue with Newsom’s claim that the USDA already tracks foreign ownership of farmland at the national level, arguing that the USDA has a “well-documented history of failing to properly enforce Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act measures.”
“According to a 2022 report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, no legitimate enforcement measures are in place to track lack of reporting or false reporting,” the authors claim.
Another incident Crabtree and McFatter point to is the hiring of Yu Ben Meng, a Chinese national with a key CCP banking role, as chief investor officer at California’s public pension system. The duo claims Yu was given a salary higher than any other state government employee, $1.5 million for two years, and was allowed to invest $3 billion in Chinese companies, including some that were blacklisted by the U.S. for their role in surveilling the Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in China.
Crabtree and McFatter also found that Yu was recruited by China’s Thousand Talents Program to serve as director of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, a regulatory agency that serves as the administrative arm of the People’s Bank of China, which carries out the policies of the CCP. Yu resigned from the California pension system after he approved a $1 billion investment in a private equity company controlled by the Blackstone Group. A yearslong investigation also found him to be in violation of two other conflict-of-interest claims and fined him $10,000.
“Newsom’s hiring of Yu Ben Meng is especially reprehensible,” Chang told the Washington Examiner. “Why would Newsom allow the funding of our enemy’s most dangerous practices?”
The book also faults Newsom for turning to TikTok for $300,000 in “behested payments” to promote his COVID-19 mandates. Congress banned the Chinese-owned social media platform, but President Donald Trump postponed enforcement until April 5. Behested donations are contributions from an individual or organization solicited by a public official for a legislative, governmental, or charitable purpose. They are not illegal in California.
In all, Newsom brought in almost $227 million in 2020, though the top donors were Facebook and Blue Shield of California, not TikTok, according to a January 2022 report from the state’s political watchdog.
Newsom asked for the money to help fight COVID-19 and run parts of his administration during the pandemic.
“Unprecedented times call for an unprecedented response,” Newsom spokesman Daniel Lopez told the Associated Press at the time.
The book’s authors, though, took umbrage with Newsom accepting money from TikTok and faulted him for promoting his mandates in a series of TikTok videos.
“Of course, tech companies like TikTok had perhaps the most to financially gain from keeping people at home, remote, isolated, and glued to their devices,” they said.
“From foreign entanglements to self-serving financial gains, Newsom and the other California corrupt class’s actions raise critical questions about accountability, integrity, and the future of California,” Crabtree said.
GAVIN NEWSOM’S BOLD PLANS HAVE A HABIT OF BLOWING UP
“A lot of people know California is a failed state,” McFatter added. “With Fool’s Gold, we show for the first time that California’s failure has been extremely lucrative for its permanent political class.”
Newsom’s office responded to the Washington Examiner after publication of the article, sharing a viral image from the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where one of the main characters Charlie tries to connect the dots in a grand conspiracy. It did not elaborate beyond the image.
