*Featured photo originally created by 209 Times and edited to support this article.
Update: Sealed Documents Timeline Reveals Feds’ Stealth Moves – Flips and Cover-Ups Accelerate
Sacramento’s political swamp doesn’t evaporate, it metastasizes. And with fresh federal filings surfacing from behind sealed doors, it’s now obvious the feds aren’t scrambling to catch up. They are quietly cornering their targets. Slowly. Precisely. And the timeline that has emerged is a surgical blueprint of how to dismantle a political machine without tipping off its architects.
Just days after The Current Report exposed California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s Chief of Staff, Viviana Becerra, for quietly pocketing a $50,000 campaign payment while running the state’s top law-enforcement office, the power structure around Sacramento’s ruling class began to buckle. What insiders hoped the public would dismiss as a “clerical oversight” has now unraveled into a multi-administration cash-skimming operation with the same familiar players showing up like bad pennies. Chiefs of staff turned political profiteers. Elected officials claiming ignorance. A carousel of corruption hiding in plain sight.
Viviana wasn’t working a side gig. She was running the Department of Justice. And when that November 1, 2022 check cleared, filed under penalty of perjury, it didn’t just cross ethical lines; it ignited them. The state’s Attorney General was relying on a senior aide who doubled as his political rainmaker. Legal only in the loosest, most convenient interpretation. Ethical in no universe.
But the real story isn’t in the headlines. It’s buried in the dates. The filings. The quiet movements behind sealed courtroom doors. And once you follow the timeline, the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.
On November 20, Sean McCluskie, former Chief of Staff to Xavier Becerra, pleaded guilty. Fast. Frantically fast. The kind of fast that says the feds already had everything they needed, and McCluskie decided it was better to cooperate than to get crushed. He admitted to siphoning nearly $225,000 from one of Xavier’s dormant campaign accounts between 2022 and 2024 through fake consulting, shell companies, padded invoices, and even a no-show job for his spouse. Sacramento grift masquerading as public service. Meanwhile Xavier, now running for Governor, clutched his pearls and called it a “gut punch.” Right. And if you believe that, I’ve got the swampland in Florida he tried to sell us – beachfront, of course.
FLIP #1
But the timeline sharpened dramatically in the days that followed, and that’s where the investigation’s real teeth appear. On November 26, just six days after McCluskie flipped, federal prosecutors filed a request in the Eastern District of California to seal key documents in the case of lobbyist Greg Campbell, case No. 2:25-cr-00252-TLN. The request, submitted by U.S. Attorney Eric Grant along with federal prosecutors Michael D. Anderson, Rosanne Rust, Katherine T. Lydon, and DOJ Public Integrity Section Trial Attorney Alexandre Dempsey, sought to seal both a four-page document tied directly to Campbell’s criminal prosecution and the request to seal it. The government asked the court to keep the documents sealed until further order.
Nothing about this is normal. Sealing documents at this stage is a tactical maneuver, the Justice Department’s version of dimming the lights before walking into the room with a search warrant. It protects cooperation details. It shields strategy. It stops accomplices from coordinating lies or destroying evidence. And in a case like this, with trails leading from the Becerra orbit to the Newsom operation to Rob Bonta’s inner circle, the sealing screams that the feds are already deeper into this political ecosystem than anyone realized.
The FBI’s recent warning letters about wiretaps now ring loud. The November 26 sealing wasn’t bureaucracy. It was the quiet tightening of the net.
FLIP #2
And then came December 4. Campbell pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Another flip. Another insider deciding cooperation was safer than loyalty. Campbell admitted he helped funnel money to McCluskie and separately assisted Gavin Newsom’s former Chief of Staff, Dana Williamson, in falsifying documents connected to her fraudulent COVID-era small-business loans. Williamson now stands indicted on 23 federal counts, with a December 11 court date looming over her like an anvil. Her alleged misconduct spans 2022 to 2024, neatly overlapping her time whispering into Newsom’s ear.
Newsom’s office insists everything happened before she joined them. The indictment paints a different story. Calls. Emails. Coordination. The connective tissue political handlers hope no one reads closely. Williamson pleaded not guilty and walked out on bail claiming health issues. People staring down 23 counts don’t walk out confidently. They walk out calculating.
Meanwhile Xavier Becerra continues dodging media like it’s radioactive. Journalist Ashley Zavala has requested an interview with him every single day since November 13. His campaign answered once, on November 20, promising to schedule something. Then silence. Three ignored emails later, and only after Campbell’s plea hit the docket, the spokesman resurfaced with a soft apology and a dismissive “won’t be able to make an interview work this week.” Two people close to Becerra have now pleaded guilty. His silence isn’t strategic. It’s survival.
Which brings us back to the triangle at the center of this political storm: Becerra. Bonta. Newsom. Each tied together through operatives, donors, and now criminal investigations. Viviana Becerra cashing campaign checks while running DOJ operations. Sean McCluskie draining Xavier Becerra’s campaign accounts. Dana Williamson running her own fraud scheme while advising the Governor. And Greg Campbell, the lobbyist connecting all three worlds, flipping and dragging their secrets into federal custody, with the most explosive details locked behind a federal seal since November 26.
THE POWER OF THREE
Three chiefs of staff. Three administrations. One playbook of corruption.
And now two confirmed flips, sealed documents, accelerating cooperation, and an unmistakable federal strategy that suggests more dominos are about to fall. Campbell faces up to ten years, but prosecutors are recommending the lower end, the classic sign that he has given them exactly what they wanted. A sentencing status hearing for both Campbell and McCluskie is scheduled for February 26, 2026.
So the question now is not whether someone else flips. It’s who flips first. Williamson, facing enough charges to bury a political career twice over. Viviana Becerra, whose dual DOJ-campaign role is a walking ethics violation. Xavier Becerra, running for Governor while his inner circle collapses. Rob Bonta, quietly burning nearly half a million dollars in legal fees tied to federal inquiries while refusing to explain why his chief of staff was cashing campaign checks.
One thing is clear. This is not a cleanup operation. It is not a handful of “bad actors.” This is structural rot, a political ecosystem where chiefs of staff moonlight as personal cash machines and elected officials pretend the balance sheet updated itself.
The indictments are stacking. The flips are accelerating. The sealed filings are multiplying. And the shadows around California’s power structure are only getting longer.
The only question left is who flips next in this carousel of corruption masquerading as governance?
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