California is back in the spotlight again, and as usual it is not because something inspiring happened. It is because another high ranking Democratic insider just caught the attention of federal prosecutors. Dana Williamson, Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff and longtime Sacramento power broker, has been slapped with a buffet of public corruption charges. The indictment reads like a greatest hits album of how to abuse power while pretending to run a state that cannot even keep the lights on.
The feds say Williamson and her political pals, Greg Campbell and Sean McCluskie, cooked up a scheme involving wire fraud, bank fraud and a long list of financial tricks that would make Enron blush. Twenty three counts in total. Eighteen of those counts carry potential twenty year prison sentences. These are not parking ticket level accusations. This is the kind of indictment that gets written only after investigators have spent a long time digging and the paperwork pile is tall enough to stop a door from slamming.