Former Newsom, Becerra aide Dana Williamson pleads guilty in FBI corruption probe
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- Williamson pleaded guilty to bank fraud, filing a false tax return and lying to the FBI.
- Williamson admitted helping siphon about $225,000 from Becerra’s dormant campaign
- Williamson faces up to 38 years in prison and fines up to $1.35 million.
A former top aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom pleaded guilty in Sacramento federal court Thursday to bank fraud, filing a false tax return and lying to the FBI in a corruption scandal that rattled California politics last fall and still threatens to upend the state’s hotly contested race for governor.
Dana Williamson, who previously advised both Newsom and gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, admitted in court that she helped to siphon about $225,000 from a dormant campaign account belonging to Becerra, as part of a scheme to pad the wages of his chief of staff, Sean McCluskie.
She was arrested in a dramatic raid last fall and came to her first court appearance looking weak from liver failure and wearing sweats, a pair of glasses and her hair pulled back in an informal bun. Her decision to plead guilty was first reported by The Bee on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Williamson, 53, came to court looking far healthier after a liver transplant. She wore a white blazer and top with flowy black pants and collar-length dark hair. The courtroom was filled with her friends and colleagues from Sacramento’s orbit of powerful lobbyists and political consultants.
In a confident voice, she stood beside her attorney, former top federal prosecutor McGregor Scott, and told U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley that the allegations in three of the counts against her were true. She faces up to 38 years in prison, along with fines of up to $1.35 million.
In a plea agreement obtained by The Bee and partly read aloud in court, Williamson admitted that she helped funnel money from Becerra’s account to McCluskie, who had taken a pay cut to follow his boss to Washington, D.C., to join the Biden administration as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
She also pleaded guilty to claiming $1.7 million in false income tax deductions, and lying to the FBI about the arrangement with McCluskie. In addition, Williamson admitted to lying to investigators about sharing confidential state government information with former clients and business partners “to give them an advantage in litigation against the state, an apparent reference to efforts to force the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to settle a sexual harassment case with video game maker Activision Blizzard.
She blames McCluskie
In her agreement, she blamed McCluskie for initiating the scheme. He and a third co-conspirator, lobbyist Greg Campbell, have already pleaded guilty and are scheduled to be sentenced June 4.
“McCluskie repeatedly sought the assistance of Williamson in funneling money from (Becerra’s) dormant state campaign account to McCluskie via text message, phone calls, and in-person meetings,” Williamson said in a statement of facts filed with her plea agreement.
She agreed to participate, helping to disguise the money as payments for a no-show job for McCluskie’s wife, she said.
The payments were spread out from spring 2022 to late 2024, which overlapped with Williamson’s time as Newsom’s chief of staff. Williamson oversaw the $10,000 monthly payments to McCluskie’s account, some of which she subsidized with her own funds.
Her plea will spare a lengthy discovery period and likely mark the legal denouement of a federal probe that shook Sacramento after the FBI recorded dozens of lobbyists in the summer of 2024 as part of the investigation.
Williamson’s Becerra connection
Williamson previously served as a senior adviser to Becerra, whose 2018 state campaign account she managed before turning it over to a protege, lobbyist Alexis Podesta. Williamson then served as Newsom’s chief of staff from December 2022 until November 2024, when the FBI notified her of its investigation and Newsom’s office put her on leave.
Before her arrest, she was known as a sharp-elbowed operative who brokered a 2023 deal to prevent oil companies from gouging drivers at the pump and led Newsom’s opposition campaign to Proposition 36, which levied harsher penalties for petty crime. She also served as a lobbyist at PG&E and advised former Gov. Jerry Brown, and operated her own firm, Grace Public Affairs, before becoming Newsom’s chief of staff.
Becerra, who is now running for governor, has repeatedly said he did not know the payments were fraudulent and called McCluskie’s betrayal a “gut punch.”
His ascendancy in polls while Williamson’s court date loomed opened a new lane of attack from political rivals who questioned whether federal officials would target him.
On the campaign trail for governor, candidate Katie Porter hinted that Becerra could still be drawn into the case.
“Becerra cannot promise Californians that he will not be named as a co-conspirator in this corruption charge,” Porter told CNN earlier this week. “It was his campaign account, he signed off on it, it was his 25-year chief of staff.”
The timing of the hearing, coming less than three weeks before the primary election, throws a spotlight on the scandal just as voters are making up their minds.
Prosecutors have said they view Becerra more as a victim in the case, accusing McCluskie and Williamson of taking advantage of his trust.
According to the indictment, McCluskie did tell Becerra that his wife would be working for Williamson, and that Williamson would be paid funds from the campaign account. But the two did not tell him that the money from his account would be going to McCluskie’s wife, or that she would be the nominal holder of a no-work job.
Even if she had been doing the work, the indictment said, it would have been illegal because Becerra, in accepting the job as Biden’s Health and Human Services secretary, was barred from using his account to campaign, and the job was nominally to perform communications work with payment coming from that account.
Scott, a former U.S. Attorney who once ran the office he is now facing off against, said in court documents on April 27 that the two sides were engaged in negotiations and would either reach an agreement or demand a jury trial by the time of Thursday’s hearing. He earlier criticized Williamson’s arrest and the manner in which it was carried out, calling it politically motivated.
Why she did it
In an impromptu news conference after Williamson entered her guilty pleas, Scott amplified his client’s claim that McCluskie was the one behind the scheme.
“This idea to take money from the Becerra account originated with Sean McCluskie,” Scott said. “This was his idea.”
Williamson, he insisted, was just trying to help a friend. Scott said he planned to emphasize that — as well as Williamson’s decision to supplement with her own funds some of the money she was paying to McCluskie’s wife — when arguing that his client should serve a shorter sentence.
The plea agreement was the product of months of negotiations, Scott said, and resulted in the dismissal of 20 of the allegations against Williamson.
Scott also said that he had tried to persuade prosecutors to agree to change the date of Thursday’s hearing so that it could be held after the primary election to no avail.
“The Department of Justice has a long-standing policy that they’re not to take any action that might affect the outcome of an election, and the application of that rule is generally within a 60-day window,” Scott said. “Clearly, we’re well within 60 days of the primary.
While Williamson could theoretically be sent to prison for decades, federal sentencing guidelines suggest a more leinent sentence of up to 37 months, Scott said. Under the plea agreement, the government has agreed to seek a sentence in line with those guidelines, and Scott said he plans to ask for leniency based on his client’s motivations and health.
He said he is also going to ask the court to require McCluskie, not Williamson, to return the $225,000 taken from Becerra’s account, since it was ultimately paid to him.
A sentencing date will not be set for Williamson until later this year. A tentative court date to discuss the timing was set for July, but that appeared likely to change, Scott said.
Williamson’s guilty pleas drew a measured response from Newsom, who at a news conference for his May revision of the state’s budget expressed sympathy for her four children.
“We all have to be held to the letter of the law, and held accountable,” Newsom said. “But on a personal basis, I’m mindful of her kids.”
This story was originally published May 14, 2026 at 10:36 AM with the headline "Former Newsom, Becerra aide Dana Williamson pleads guilty in FBI corruption probe."
