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Nightmare For Newsom: Bombshell Report Regarding FireAid Fraud Drops On Pallisades Fire Anniversary

CORRUPTION

Will California Gov. Gavin Newsom have the backbone to show up in Pacific Palisades on Wednesday morning for the first anniversary of the Palisades Fire — or will he keep using the victims as political props while chasing his next ambition? That’s the question hanging over a community that lost everything, as residents gather to remember those who were killed and reflect on a disaster the governor was quick to exploit but slow to meaningfully address.

Community groups are planning multiple events to mark the anniversary, led by two starkly different gatherings. The White Glove Flag Presentation and Remembrance Ceremony will honor the twelve Palisadians who lost their lives and recognize the neighbors, volunteers, and first responders who stepped in as institutions failed, helping the community recover and rebuild. In contrast, the They Let Us Burn rally — headlined by Palisades Fire victim Heidi Montag — will demand accountability for what organizers call a catastrophic collapse of prevention, basic precaution, and leadership, arguing the disaster was not an act of nature but the predictable result of government negligence.

Residents of Pacific Palisades and Altadena — the community devastated by the Eaton Fire just one day after the Palisades Fire — are seething at Gov. Gavin Newsom over the systemic failures that fueled the blaze and the suffocating bureaucratic mess they’re still trapped in. Their anger has only grown as Newsom continues to use fire victims as political props, folding their suffering into his partisan battles and campaign ambitions, most recently during a soft-focus interview Monday with MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff.

Last week, Newsom’s team informed the New York Post that he will be in the Los Angeles area on Wednesday to meet with “wildfire survivors.” However, they did not provide details about which survivors he will meet or whether he plans to engage in any public events.

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If he’s wise, he’ll steer clear of Pacific Palisades. Several who live in that community—some lost everything, while others managed to save their homes—and none of them are keen on having him show up to make a spectacle of himself and take all the attention.

San Francisco State University political science professor Jason McDaniel told the Post that the fallout from the wildfires, combined with rising housing and homeowner’s insurance costs, “could be a ticking time bomb for Gavin Newsom’s campaign. This is not Rudy Giuliani after 9/11. It is a difficult political narrative, and it’s become more likely to be used [as] a sign of California mismanagement.” He then warned that “Grandstanding or making political hay out of the fire anniversary won’t be well-received.”

Newsom appears uninterested in heeding McDaniel’s advice, opting instead for a familiar political reflex: blame Trump. Returning to his MS NOW interview, Newsom claimed that Trump had “not even lifted a finger” to help. That claim ignores a stubborn timeline. The fire occurred in the final weeks of Joe Biden’s floundering presidency, while large-scale debris removal — fully funded and executed by the federal government through FEMA, EPA, and the Army Corps of Engineers — did not begin until February, after Trump was inaugurated.

Predictably, Newsom now treats that federally led cleanup as a political photo op, claiming credit for work his administration neither organized nor paid for. And there’s also this: California is his state; he claimed he could handle the crime problems without Trump, but now it’s Trump’s fault his over-regulated, Democrat-owned cities created the perfect firestorm to destroy entire neighborhoods?

Not only that, but he was praising Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in February:

“I will say this. This is true and it’s factual and you gotta call balls and strikes. Lee Zeldin is doing an amazing job. He’s on the ground today in Los Angeles. They are moving the first phase of the debris removal at record pace. And I think it’s that mindset that we brought to the meeting and the mindset that came out of that meeting. The President wants to do something that’s never been done, and that is, address this crisis with a degree of sophistication and focus, to get the job done and get people’s lives back.”

WATCH:

This guy.

Lately, Newsom has been saturating social media and friendly left-wing press interviews with claims that Donald Trump and Congress are deliberately stalling critical federal aid. The accusations have not gone unanswered: members of the administration are now pushing back publicly, disputing Newsom’s narrative and accusing him of misrepresenting both the facts and the process to deflect from his own failures.

Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Kelly Loeffler, who’s actually been to the Palisades to work directly with victims, said, “In FY25, Los Angeles received $3.2 BILLION in SBA disaster loans. Despite historic relief funding by @SBAgov and hazardous material removal by @EPA, only a few survivors have been allowed to start rebuilding due to a failure of local permitting. One year later, homeowners and small business owners are still standing in the rubble, while California’s leaders keep them stranded in red tape.”

And, the $34 billion in federal aid Newsom is asking for? Yeah, as one fire victim points out, is not for the fire victims: “The bulk goes to NGOs and patronage groups. It’s like FireAid all over.”

And maybe that’s exactly why it hasn’t been approved.

Coincidentally — or not — on Tuesday afternoon Jim Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee released interim findings from their investigation into what happened to the $100 million in FireAid donations raised in the immediate aftermath of the fires, raising fresh questions about transparency, oversight, and where the money actually went. They found: “FireAid has diverted donations to third-party groups instead of providing direct relief to victims of the fires.” It added:

FireAid advertised that all donations raised during its benefit concert would go directly to victims of the California wildfires. Unfortunately, this was not the case. To date, FireAid has granted $75 million of the $100 million raised to a total of 188 non-profits, including $100,000 for voter participation efforts for Native Americans, $550,000 to groups involved in political advocacy, an unknown amount of money toward illegal aliens, $100,000 to podcasters, and over $500,000 for bonuses, salaries, and consultants for non-profit organizations.

In addition, the report includes some very infuriated uses for the money.

“A grant report dated February 2025 included a list of CORE’s ‘priority groups’ that it wanted to help with money [$250,000] it received from FireAid. Among those priority groups were ‘Undocumented Migrants’ because ‘this group is at high risk of housing instability, economic hardship, exploitation, and homelessness.'”

If there truly were “undocumented migrants” who lost homes in the fires, it would be far cheaper to enforce existing law and send them home than to put taxpayers on the hook for long-term housing vouchers. But let’s be honest: there likely weren’t many illegal aliens living in Pacific Palisades or Altadena to begin with. The claim feels less like a reflection of reality and more like a convenient talking point designed to redirect sympathy — and public funds — away from the actual residents who lost everything.

Newsom blaming Trump for this is a sick joke but of course it’s no laughing matter, especially now that it appears the Justice Department is getting very interested in all the ‘alleged’ fraud that Jordan’s committee may have found and other fraudulent activity akin to what’s taking place in Minnesota.

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