Trump's Justice Department going after people who anger or even sadden the president is nothing new, in this dangerous era when the presidency is increasingly about appeasing the wishes of the old man in the Oval Office.
Leticia James, James Comey, Adam Schiff. Most recently, E. Jean Carroll, who personally sued President Trump and won a huge settlement over her claim that he sexually assaulted her. Now, the Department of Justice is investigating her for possible perjury.
It would be easy to think of Gov. Gavin Newsom's Monday announcement that the U.S. Department of Justice is now targeting his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, as another addition to that list.
But this attack on Siebel Newsom (alleged attack, at least; the Justice Department has not confirmed that he is a target) is something much darker in our slide toward authoritarianism. While the details of what is being investigated are murky and the president has yet to intervene, there is every appearance that the Trump administration is seeking to stop a political rival who has a real chance of ousting MAGA from top office.
“It is no fluke or happenstance that the wife of a major presidential candidate is being investigated,” Steven Levitsky, a politics professor at Harvard University, told me Monday. “That's the nature of selective prosecution and that's a pillar of authoritarian rule.”
Levitsky is an expert on authoritarian regimes and how they take and maintain power. His argument that Newsom is a viable challenger may seem obvious: Newsom himself is already raising funds from it. But this particular alleged investigation deserves a moment of pause because it is not the usual decline in justice that we have been witnessing up to this point.
“This is different,” he said. “This is a forward-looking chase.”
So far, Levistky notes, Trump has loudly called for the prosecution of those who have wronged him in the past, sometimes even in the distant past. Yes, he has disgraced the Justice Department by demanding that it serve as his own personal hammer of retaliation, even putting his own personal attorney, Todd Blanche, in charge when Pam Bondi was not accommodating or successful enough in trampling perceived enemies and quashing Epstein's files.
But those prosecutions have largely been based on grievances, not aimed at maintaining power.
Going after Siebel Newsom seems more like a preemptive, forward-thinking attack aimed at Newsom before the 2028 election through the Achilles heel of every decent man: his family.
In fact, right-wing media, closely tied to the whims of the White House, have been targeting Siebel Newsom for months.
In particular, Siebel Newsom has come under attack for her work as a documentary filmmaker that focuses on female empowerment and examines how and why we have the gender norms that we do when it comes to masculinity and femininity. I'll let you find out how popular that is in the MAGA world, where real women make sandwiches.
Conservative commentator Sean Hannity has attacked Siebel Newsom for saying he sometimes changes the gender of a book character from “he” to “she” when reading to his children. Fox News has attacked her for daring to give her children dolls to play with, leading some MAGA influencers to label her “psychotic” or “abusive.” Right-wing icon Megyn Kelly called her “crazy” for sharing the tragic story of her sister's death when Siebel Newsom was 6 years old.
And other outlets have focused on the fact that some of the films she's been involved with have been approved for use in California schools, leading to conspiracies that Newsom used his influence to impose his wife's “woke” agenda on children, by which we're apparently talking about the liberal plagues of decency and inclusion.
Newsom's office said that in recent weeks, FBI and IRS investigators have contacted family members, friends and business associates of the family. Siebel Newsom also works around online safety for children, but it seems likely that any attention will focus on these films and related nonprofits, and the ever-popular MAGA boogeyman of schools forcing ideologies on children. Add to that Siebel Newsom's company making even a dollar and the way the IRS can find problems with any tax return, and you have about 10,000 hours of right-wing propaganda.
So whether the pressure to target Siebel Newsom comes from the White House or not, Newsom's announcement raises the troubling specter that this administration is becoming more serious about maintaining control by reining in potential replacements before they become too strong.
In his video on Monday, Newsom urged Trump with hand-to-hand bluster to go after him as much as he wanted, but leaving his wife and family out of it. But I wouldn't underestimate Siebel Newsom, who showed his strength when he testified against disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, publicly exposing a private and painful history.
Siebel Newsom's office told me he's fine with being part of any fight against Trump.
“There are clearly no limits to what Donald Trump will do to get his way or to challenge those who stand in his way,” Siebel Newsom said in a statement.
The “governor and I will continue to speak truth to power because the American people deserve so much more.”
By coming out ahead of any official announcement of an investigation by the Justice Department, Siebel Newsom and her husband could take control of the narrative, something Trump loathes.
That setback, Levitsky said, is fundamental, not only for them, but more importantly for all of us. After last year, when so many institutions and individuals crumbled under Trump's power, the strength of our democracy increasingly depends on those with political capital who stand up to him.
Coming out striking first does just that.
