Gavin Newsom wants you to know he's a man of the people — the people who pull in nearly $2 million a year while drawing a government paycheck. The California governor released four years of tax returns Friday showing annual income between $1.7 million and $2 million from 2022 through 2024, a staggering figure for a man whose actual salary as governor is roughly $192,000.

The math doesn't add up for working Americans: how does a lifelong politician amass this kind of wealth on a public servant's wages? The answer, according to the returns, is winery, restaurant, and hospitality businesses tucked into a blind trust when Newsom took office. The PlumpJack Group — run by his sister and cousin — generates the bulk of the family's income. But the returns don't identify which individual businesses made money and which didn't, making it impossible to follow the dollars through the trust.

The New York Times reported that the release was driven in part by a federal investigation into the finances of his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom — a detail the Guardian buried and the Post didn't mention. Newsom's office claimed the disclosure was meant to counter "right-wing claims" the family had enriched itself during his tenure. He might want to try harder.

Siebel Newsom's production company, Girls Club Entertainment, lost money most years — about $37,000 in 2022 alone, when she reported earning just $11,700 from the business, according to the Post. But she simultaneously collected roughly $150,000 annually from her nonprofit, The Representation Project, to promote those same films. A nonprofit paying its founder six figures to push media that loses money: there's a racket that would make any swamp creature proud.

Then there's the lifestyle. The Newsoms paid nearly $200,000 in wages to household employees in 2024 alone. They wrote off $45,000 worth of Armani business attire donated to an Oakland restorative justice nonprofit — claiming a thrift-store value of $4,900 on their taxes. The couple gave between $40,000 and $67,000 to charity each year, a fraction of their income.

Newsom also collected $70,000 to $75,000 in author income in 2023 and 2024, reportedly from his memoir or other publishing projects.

Notably, Newsom had promised to release his tax returns annually when he first ran for governor. He didn't. The Guardian and the Post both noted this was the first release since 2022. The 2025 returns are on extension until October.

The DOJ has launched investigations into the Newsoms — investigations the governor dismisses as politically motivated. Maybe they are. But when a politician who lectures Californians about equity is pulling nearly $2 million a year through opaque business trusts while his wife draws a nonprofit salary to fund money-losing documentaries, the public deserves more than 700 pages they can look at but not copy.

The question isn't whether Newsom broke the law. It's whether the system he operates in — blind trusts, nonprofit salary pipelines, book deals, and real estate windfalls — is designed to make public servants very rich while they tell everyone else to wait their turn.