Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed openthebooks.com Founder Adam Andrzejewski to the newsmaker line to unravel Silicon Valley Bank’s ties to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Leahy: To the issue of honesty, cover-up. Silicon Valley Bank, all the roads are leading to Governor Gavin Newsom. Adam, thanks for joining us.
Andrzejewski: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate coming back on the program.
Leahy: Crom and I were here talking; there’s a lack of honesty and integrity. I think in your latest column at Openthebooks substack, you’re pointing out that there’s a coverup about Governor Gavin Newsom’s involvement with the Silicon Valley Bank. Which as everybody knows, failed spectacularly. Adam, tell us more about that.
Andrzejewski: So incredibly Silicon Valley Bank through their investment banking arm bought stakes in three of Governor Gavin Newsom’s private businesses. That was broken by The Intercept.
Here’s what we broke at openthebooks.com. We put the other half of the story together that the president of the Silicon Valley Bank’s investment banking arm, his name is John China.
Leahy: Whoa, whoa. No.
Carmichael: Are you making that up?
Leahy: Are you making that up?
Andrzejewski: I’m not. I’m not making it up. His name is John China. It is.
Carmichael: At least you didn’t say his name was Hunter China. (Laughter)
Andrzejewski: There is a real question. Is the Chinese influence being funded out of that investment banking arm as well? But no, his name is actually John China, and he’s a good friend of the Newsom’s. He’s right in the mix of Newsom Inc., as we call it, at openthebooks.com. We found that he is a founding board member of Newsom’s nonprofit, the California Partners Project.
What is the California Partners Project? It’s a nonprofit expressly created to push the public policy agenda of Jennifer Siebel-Newsom, the wife of Governor Gavin Newsom. She calls herself the first partner. The first thing Governor Gavin Newsom did when he was inaugurated was he established this public office for his wife.
A subdivision of the office of governor, it’s called the office of the first partner. It’s got nine staffers and a million-dollar-a-year appropriation of taxpayer money. Five million dollars since 2019 has gone into this office, but it wasn’t enough. They established this nonprofit to bring in more funding, more staff, and more political lobbying muscle behind his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s public policy agenda.
The first thing they passed incredibly was gender quotas on corporate boards, and they were patting themselves on the back with Silicon Valley Bank’s John China, the Newsom’s, when they passed, signed this into law, but even a California court threw it out because obviously, it was discriminatory. Judicial Watch sued them and got that law thrown out.
Carmichael: I’m really interested in this thing where you’re saying the Silicone Valley Bank in their private investment arm invested. When they collapsed, did they still own interests in three of Newsom’s companies?
Andrzejewski: Yes. They disclosed it on their website. And this begs a lot of questions. We know what the questions are, right? They’ve got the regulators, now that the bank has failed, they’ve got to open the books on the good friend of the Newsom’s, the head of the $5.5 billion investment pool of money that bought stakes in three of his businesses.
Did they overpay for the governor’s business? Was he able to pull chips off the table, pull money out of, take money and risk off the table for himself personally, because of the deep relationship with the head of the Silicon Valley Bank’s investment business? We don’t know the answers to that, but we need that transparency.
Carmichael: So you’re saying the Silicon Valley bank had a $5.5 billion private investment organization or entity within their holding company or within their bank that took $5.5 billion and made direct investments in private companies, three of which were in entities where Newsom was a material shareholder. Do we know the names of those three companies and the amount of the investments?
Andrzejewski: We don’t know the amounts. That’s not disclosed, but we do know the names. There are three wineries, I forget the third one, but the second one is Plump Jack. Two of the wineries are pretty well-known brands and so we don’t know the amounts, but certainly, all of this needs sunshine on it.
Leahy: If you look at this, will the equity interests of the Silicon Valley Bank and these three businesses owned by the governor of California be liquidated?
Carmichael: And then the question is whether or not they’ll be liquidated at a preferential rate if these wineries are doing well. (Andrzejewski laughs) If the voters get angry…
Andrzejewski: It will really open a can of worms. What if Newsom buys back the interest from Silicon Bank in his own business at a discounted rate than what they purchased it for? It gets really interesting very quickly.
Carmichael: John Steinbeck wrote a book for if the voters get mad about these winery deals The Grapes of Wrath. (Laughter)
Leahy: Boom, chakalaka.
Carmichael: This is very interesting, especially if those numbers. If it’s a couple hundred thousand dollars each, it’s not that big a deal. But if it’s five or $10 million that’s real money.
Leahy: By the way. Adam, can you find out how much was spent, and how much was invested by Silicon Valley Bank in those three businesses owned by Gavin Newsom?
Andrzejewski: They’re private transactions, but now that the Fed has taken over the bank, look, we need to know. I think there needs to be transparency on this, and the regulators and law enforcement need to start asking the proper questions because here’s what we do know.
The governor himself solicited, he requested a six-figure $100,000 gift for his nonprofit from John China through Silicon Valley Bank, and they paid it. They gave $100,000. It was so close to Newsom that under California ethics law, they had to post that $100,000 gift as behested, as a requested gift on a state ethics website.
That money should be paid back to the bank from Newsom’s nonprofit. And we’re issuing the clarion call that they paid $100,000 back. This was given in 2021, so not that long ago. The depositors, the investors, and now the taxpayers, deserve to have that six-figure gift back in the bank.
Leahy: Absolutely. Adam, a great reporting on your part. Hey, can you come back and tell us what the resolution of this is going to be?
Andrzejewski: Absolutely. I look forward to it.
Leahy: It’s a lot of money and this needs to be transparent, Adam, with Openthebooks.com. Thanks so much for joining us. Come back again if you would please.
Andrzejewski: Thank you so much for having me.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Adam Andrzejewski” by Adam Andrzejewski. Background Photo “Silicon Valley Bank” by Tony Webster. CC BY 2.0.
Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed CEO Adam Andrzejewski of Openthebooks.com to the newsmaker line to reveal the Governor of California and First Parnter’s pay-to-play using pornography in K12 public schools nationwide.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line right now, Adam Andrzejewski with open the books. Adam, you’ve got this story about Gavin Newsom. I can’t even believe this. I want you to lay it out, Adam. Welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Andrzejewski: Well, thanks for having me on, Michael. This is exactly what parents should be scared of on the curriculum being shown to their children nationwide. Fiscal hawks have derided and ridiculed the California governor, Gavin Newsom, for his public policy that puts taxpayers last. What’s gone under the radar has been the relationship between the First Partner, his wife, as she self-titles herself, and the governor, himself.
Leahy: She’s not the First Lady. She’s the First Partner out there. Oh my goodness.
Andrzejewski: She does have a taxpayer-paid staff of nine, an annual budget now coming off the governor’s desk of $1.2 million a year to advocate for her public policy. We took that, Michael, in comparison versus the first year in 2017 with Melania Trump at the White House.
She was the First Lady. She had a dedicated staff of five. Joe Biden last year in 2021, and the latest White House payroll disclosure, had a staff of 12. So the “First Lady,” in California, the first partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, she’s right in the middle with a staff of nine.
Leahy: And now they’ve been pushing this K-12 mental health servicing for like four and a half billion bucks. What’s the deal with that?
Andrzejewski: As you know, I’m from Illinois, it’s the Super Bowl of corruption, and our politicians are famous for double dipping the taxpayer dime. Michael, look, I don’t know if this is quadruple dipping if it’s five times dipping, or six times dipping the tax paradigm, but the Newsoms have really figured this out.
We call this Newsom Inc. And it starts right there with that first ever created office of First Partner, where she had gotten, since 2019, when he was elected, nearly $5 million to push her agenda and nine staffers. She has advocated for more K through 12 mental health funding.
Her husband convinced the legislature last summer to deliver $5 billion, in part which brought the hiring of 10,000 new school counselors. As soon as this was passed, the head of the School Counselor Association in California issued a statement thanking the governor and saying that there would be a greater need for Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s films and curriculum in the classrooms of California. Now, if this was issued in Tennessee, people would suspect that this is legalized pay-to-play.
Leahy: So hold it. She’s got a film production company also?
Andrzejewski: She started, and this is where you get into double and triple-dipping, a nonprofit organization that creates films and curricula in the classrooms. And over the course of the last decade, they disclose that they’ve received over $1.5 million in royalties from schools who license her films and curriculum.
It’s a big footprint, Michael. They disclose that they’re in all 50 states, including Tennessee. There are 11,000 classrooms, 5,000 schools, and 2.6 million students who have seen this curriculum. She draws a salary from the nonprofit.
Over the last decade, it’s been $1.5 million. She has a for-profit film production company that contracts with those nonprofits to produce the films. Her for-profit has received $1.6 million over the last decade. And here comes the fourth or fifth quadruple dip. Newsom himself, the governor, stars in the films to promote his political future.
Leahy: So 10,000 counselors and they’re being paid all this money. They play their curriculum and they also get paid for it. Meanwhile, this is for mental health. I think, isn’t mental health getting worse for kids since this passed?
Andrzejewski: The most ironic thing, obviously, is Jennifer Siebel Newsom recognized that her husband’s lockdown policies of the K through 12 schools were hurting the mental health of children! So the Newsoms actually create the problem and then come in with billions of dollars to, “solve the problem.”
The California schools were the last to reopen in the 50 states. Half the schools weren’t even open in May of 2021. Okay, so here’s the thing. It’s also ironic that Jennifer Siebel Newsom recognizes that her films and curriculum create mental health problems in schools. She warns teachers in schools that when they use the films and use the curriculum, they should keep school counselors and school therapists on hand.
Leahy: The company is called Girls Club Entertainment and they do all these films and the schools pay for that and she gets a royalty off of that. Is that right?
Andrzejewski: That’s right. And the curriculum is particularly troubling. I know you have a family program, Michael, but I’m very uncomfortable describing this.
Leahy: Then don’t go into details other than to say it’s troubling. We have state Representative Jody Barrett here in studio with us and you’re telling him and our audience that this weird curriculum from Girls Club Entertainment is currently in Tennessee schools. Is that right?
Andrzejewski: It is. It is. And here’s what an 11-year-old on the approved Newsom curriculum will see. They’ll see an upside-down animated stripper with tape over her chest. The 15-year-olds will see nearly naked women or naked women being slapped, handcuffed, and brutalized in still images taken from porn videos. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve seen these things and it’s absolutely appalling, profane, and disgusting.
No governor of the 50 states should be promoting this and no child should be subjected to this classroom. They include Michael, this is important. They include the internet web address to the porn video giving the students a roadmap outside of the classroom for further exploration.
Leahy: So Adam, color me a tad skeptical of your claim that this is in Tennessee public schools right now. How can we verify that claim? State Representative Barrett is here right now. Would you like to see if we can verify this claim?
Barrett: Oh, I would love to know what districts this is in. This is something that is certainly on the radar of the General Assembly right now.
Leahy: Adam hold on. You’ve made a claim that this is in Tennessee. We have a Tennessee state legislator here. How can we verify that claim? Because until we verify it, we can’t do anything about it. What do we do to verify the claim that this untoward curriculum is being viewed in Tennessee’s K2 public schools? Help us out with that.
Andrzejewski: Number one, they made the claim in their annual report that they’re in all 50 states, 5,000 schools. So her nonprofit makes that claim. Number two, here’s how the spending in Tennessee and across the country in the school districts are being hit it. At Openthebooks.com, check this out. We’ve got 3,000 checkbooks from public schools.
And this is where they write the checks and disclose them to us. They’re only in two of those schools. So how are they paying for this? The entire operation is set up online. It’s paid with a credit card. We don’t have that spending at Openthebooks.com. We have the checks and the warrants that are spent. So it’s hidden in the credit card files of your school districts.
And this leads to point number three. Point number three is we need immediate curriculum transparency in the K through 12 schools. It’s not only the pipelines of pornography I’m talking about. I’m talking about kindergarteners being taught this.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Adam Andrzejewski” by Adam Andrzejewski. Background Photo “Classroom” by Wokandapix.
