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California Gov. Gavin Newsom bailed out his state’s biggest utility, which caused some of the Golden State’s worst wildfires, after being showered in hundreds of thousands in donations from executives, according to a scorching assessment of his leadership in a new book.
Instead, he opted to go after oil and gas companies over climate change claims.
“Newsom holds oil and gas companies responsible for wildfires but not the utilities that caused most of them after he and his wife raked in hundreds of thousands in donations,” Susan Crrabtree and Jedd McFatter write in their muckraking book, “Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All.”
The authors note Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, filed a lawsuit against oil and gas companies, alleging they misled the public about climate change, which contributes to conditions for wildfires.
But Newsom went easy on a monopolistic utility — Pacific Gas and Electric Company or PG&E, the authors say.
“While blaming the oil companies for contributing to climate change, he failed to hold PG&E and other utilities accountable for wildfires that spewed record amounts of carbon and other toxic smoke into the area,” the authors said in the book, to be released this week.
PG&E pleaded guilty in June 2020 to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the wildfires that destroyed the northern California town of Paradise in 2018.
That blaze — named the Camp Fire — ignited because of a downed PG&E power line on Nov. 8, 2018, burning more than 153,000 acres, leveling 13,500 homes and killing 85 people
“But far from holding the massive utility accountable, Newsom spearheaded a legislative bankruptcy deal that allowed the utility to continue operating, then signed $21 billion in new insurance protections for PG&E into law,” the authors said.
PG&E is a big donor to California Dems, with close ties to the Newsoms, the excerpts of the book obtained by The Post reveal.
“Over the past two decades, Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have accepted at least $700,000 in donations from PG&E. The funds went to Newsom’s many campaign coffers and his wife’s gender-justice films, at least one of which was screened in PG&E’s corporate San Francisco skyscraper in 2011,” the authors said.
The book points out that PG&E is listed in the credits of two of Siebel Newsom’s films as an “associate producer.”
Siebel Newsom founded the Representation Project film company.
The book also notes that Newsom pal Jason Kinney is a partner at Axiom advisers, a top lobbying firm that represented companies “to whom the utility [PG&E] owed millions [of dollars]” while it filed for bankruptcy.
Newsom faced a ferocious backlash for hypocritically attending a birthday celebration for Kinney on Nov. 6,2020 at the Napa Valley French Laundry restaurant, violating his own COVID-19 pandemic stay at home rules and to wear masks at gatherings.
After Newsom engineered the bankruptcy deal and that passed the state legislature, the PG&E creditors represented by Axiom were “paid in full” and Axiom collected at least $400,000 in fees for their lobbying work for the creditors, the book said.
The California Utility Commission, whose commissioners are all now appointed by Newsom, also regularly approved increases on PG&E’s already sky high bills on customers, the authors said.
Newsom caused a stir last week, splitting with Democrats, acknowledging that “it’s deeply unfair” to allow transgender athletes to compete against biological women, while chatting with a MAGA conservative Charlie Kirk on his podcast debut episode, “This is Gavin Newsom.”
Co-author Susan Crabtree, in a statement to The Post, said Newsom is part of the problem, not the solution, to California’s problems.
“Everything about Gavin Newsom is performative, rather than performance-based,” Crabtree said.
“From his college admission, the launch of his wine business with Getty money, to his political rise – all were handed to him on a silver platter. That’s why he thinks he can run for president via podcast while leaving his state in shambles.”
She added: “It’s also why he has no problem taking money from PG&E, which caused the deadliest fire in California history, to fund his campaigns, ballot initiatives and his wife’s gender-justice films, while acting like he cares about wildfire victims.”
The Post reached out to Newsom for comment.
