“Becerra’s rivals and critics have also pointed to his leadership record…glaring failures that should disqualify him from serving as governor.”
CALIFORNIA — A new bombshell report underscores the depth of Xavier Becerra’s incompetence, as a former top adviser now faces nearly two dozen federal charges and is reportedly in plea negotiations with prosecutors.
Becerra now says he was unaware and a victim — but not before saying he was completely “aware of the payments being made” in November 2025. The case raises questions about oversight, how such activity could persist among his closest aides, and whether Californians can trust him to keep track of our money as governor.
“Becerra touts his experience as a qualification for the governorship, but his past is brimming with incompetency,” said Steyer for Governor spokesperson Amelia Platt. “Californians need a governor who will fight for them and get things done. Becerra's history of failed leadership and lack of accountability makes clear he is not that person."
While gubernatorial candidate Becerra claims that his experience qualifies him for the governorship, his past is brimming with “glaring failures,” as the Los Angeles Times called into question yesterday. His resume includes an utter mishandling of COVID-19 and other public health crises, failed management of the unaccompanied minor crisis at the border, and his former chief of staff’s fraud scandal.
The following are excerpts from the LA Times article.
By Kevin Rector
[...]
Becerra’s critics also have pointed to his leadership record, but to highlight what they contend are glaring failures.
Steyer spokesman Kevin Liao alleged Becerra was “absent, ineffective, or too late” in responding to COVID-19 and other public health crises as health secretary, and that California “cannot afford incompetence, or someone who disappears when things get hard.”
The remarks echoed others made during the pandemic, including by Eric Topol, who is executive vice president of Scripps Research in La Jolla, a professor of translational medicine and a cardiologist. During the pandemic, Topol accused Becerra of being “invisible” in the fight to control it. In a recent interview, he said he still believes that.
Topol said the Biden administration’s COVID response was defined by poor data collection and “infighting” among agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, including on vital issues such as when Americans should receive booster shots and how long they should isolate after infection.
Becerra “basically took a very absent, low profile — didn’t show up, didn’t harmonize the remarkable infighting,” Topol said. “The buck stops with him.”
[...]
A sweeping New York Times investigation found the health department couldn’t find some 85,000 children it had released, that Becerra had relaxed screening processes for sponsors and that placement concerns from career health staff went ignored or were silenced.
The investigation by reporter Hannah Dreier ound that thousands of the 250,000 or so migrant children who arrived in the U.S. between early 2021 and early 2023 had “ended up in punishing jobs across the country — working overnight in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs, operating machinery in factories — all in violation of child labor laws.”
It found there were many signs of “the explosive growth of this labor force,” and that staff had repeatedly flagged concerns about it in reports that reached Becerra’s desk. It also reported that, during a staff meeting in the summer of 2022, Becerra had pressed staff to move children even more quickly through the process, comparing them to factory parts.
“If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would have never become famous and rich. This is not the way you do an assembly line,” Becerra said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by the newspaper.
[...]
Becerra also has faced criticism and questions related to the federal indictment of his former chief of staff Sean McCluskie, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud after authorities accused him of stealing some $225,000 from Becerra’s dormant state political campaign account.
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