Rescue California, the recall committee helmed by Republican consultants, is facing a $1 million lawsuit filed by a deep-pocketed Bitcoin pioneer stemming from the last, failed attempt to boot Newsom from office in late 2021.
Jesse Powell, a founder and chair of Kraken, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is accusing Rescue and the group’s current and former operators of deceiving him to raise eleventh-hour dollars into the committee. When Powell demanded they send it back to him, arguing the money was conditioned on his name staying out of the public eye, they refused, channeling it into advertisements that consultants collected commissions on. Rescue’s lawyers counter that Powell didn’t suffer damages.
The nonprofit Center for American Liberty filed an emergency petition with the California Supreme Court requesting a stay on the governor’s action, arguing state and federal laws bar unemployment benefits to those without legal status and that providing the money to nonprofit groups represents an improper gift of taxpayer funds.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Whittier City Councilwoman Jessica Martinez and Ricardo Benitez, an immigrant from El Salvador who is now a U.S. citizen. Both plaintiffs are Republican candidates for the state Assembly. Benitez is running to represent the 39th Assembly District in the San Fernando Valley and Martinez is vying to represent the 57th Assembly District in the southern San Gabriel Valley.
“This is taxpayer money that may only be appropriated by the legislative branch. This is not a slush fund for the governor to spend as he sees fit,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, a San Francisco attorney and chief executive officer for the Center for American Liberty, said in a written statement Thursday. “At a time when law-abiding Californians are crushed by unemployment, housing issues, business closures and massive limitations on our normal lives, Governor Newsom is doing an end-run around the legal guardrails in place.”
The thing that is wrong with this aid is that it is insufficient. The fact is that, if these people are living in distress, we all live in distress.
If they get ill, our beloved “legal citizens and immigrants” will get ill as well.
People live here without legal status because of deficiencies in the immigration system.
Not because of choice.
These far right organizations — who have no sense of empathy, compassion, understanding care, let alone common sense — completely ignore the fact that the corporate capitalist system depends upon these people, who pay taxes, and we need to extend human decency to them and to maintain them during this crisis.
It’s been almost three years since Lt. Gov. Newsom, in his capacity as one of the three members of the State Lands Commission, filed a lawsuit against the people of San Francisco to do just that. Now the Chairman of the State Lands Commission, Newsom continues to sue San Francisco to invalidate Proposition B, the Waterfront Height Limit Right to Vote Act. San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved Prop. B in 2014 in the aftermath of the 8 Washington luxury condo fiasco to ensure voters always have the opportunity to weigh in on future plans to raise the existing height limits along The City’s shoreline. Three years and many legal filings later, the lawsuit is about to have its day in court at a hearing in June. Both sides have submitted lengthy legal briefs making the case to Superior Court Judge Suzanne R. Bolanos that she should rule in their favor. The impact of Bolanos’ decision will ripple far beyond one ballot measure and one city.
