Steve Hilton told the California Post that Xavier Becerra needs to be pressed again by the federal authorities about his knowledge of payments to his former chief of staff.
Page F3From§Eachthe midnight edition — 31 August 2026
Rival candidate asks FBI to grill Becerra again over the same $225,000 campaign cash scandal.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the numbers as filed, because the numbers are the only part of this that don't change depending on who's asking. The figure in question is $225,000 in campaign cash. That figure appears in the request for the FBI to conduct a second round of questioning. It is described, in that same request, as the same $225,000 already on the record — not a new sum, not a revised sum, the same one. Separately, a companion piece runs asking whether the candidate in question knew about the underlying corruption matter at all. Two pieces, one publication, one number, filed the same week.
I want to be careful here, because precision is the whole job. Asking the FBI to re-interview a subject about a dollar figure that has not changed since the last interview is not, on its own, evidence of anything new. It is evidence that the number has not gone away. Those are different findings, and hon, they get reported as though they're the same finding, which is where the gap opens up.…
…(cont) Here's the reconciliation. Column one: a $225,000 campaign contribution, flagged once, now flagged again by a political rival ahead of a race. Column two: a public request that voters be told what the candidate knew, filed by a separate outlet, same week. Column three: no new dollar amount, no new date, no new document cited in either piece. When the figure doesn't move but the headline count does, what's increasing isn't the evidence, it's the printing.
I don't have a motive to assign here, and I'm not going to invent one. I can tell you what's in the filing and what's not. What's in the filing is $225,000. What's not in the filing, as of this printing, is anything new to reconcile it against. Until that changes, the honest entry in this ledger is: one number, asked about twice, in the same month, by people running against the man being asked about.
“Two headlines, one number, and nobody's produced a receipt showing where the $225,000 actually went — that's not new evidence, that's the story getting recycled by the guy running against him.”
“This is simply due diligence — voters deserve full transparency on any campaign finance question, full stop. Now, whether this is the same $225,000 figure being re-investigated with no new findings, that's — well, that would suggest something, wouldn't it. I'll have my office clarify.”
The receipts
Voters need to know the truth before he coasts to victory. The Department of Justice should reinterview Becerra. We need to find out whether he is ignorant or incompetent.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.