Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office quietly asked the department of finance for an additional $1 million to stave off congressional probes of California’s hospice-fraud scandal.
Page F7From§Eachthe late evening edition — 14 September 2026
Ambulance-shakedown office bills taxpayers another $1 million to fight the fraud probe
“They caught the state running Medicaid money through an ambulance, and the state's answer was to ask you for another million bucks — to pay lawyers to explain the ambulance. That's not defense spending, that's laundering the invoice through the same account the invoice came from. Your kid's school is short a nurse and the state found a spare million for this in a week.”
“Look, every governor's office needs resources to respond to congressional overreach, that's just — that's basic due process, you want them to respond with what, silence? And the ambulance thing, that's an allegation, from a filing, that hasn't — okay, it's in a filing. But asking for money to answer a fraud question isn't the same as the fraud question, those are — did I just say the request for defense funds is a separate line from what it's defending? That's not landing the way I wanted.”
The receipts
In the world of Gavin Newsom, fraud investigations are something to fight, not assist.
· Feds probe Gov. Gavin Newsom’s travel, personal spending as new details of DOJ probe revealed from the morgue, 12 Sep 2026
· Newsom’s California is shaking down taxpayers — and the getaway vehicle is an ambulance from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Gavin Newsom’s nanny state hits the road from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.