As PlumpJack grew from


a retail wine storefront to a 700-employee conglom- erate with a boutique ho- tel and a 53-acre vineyard in the famed Napa Val- ley, Gordon’s investment would grow along with it, eventually becoming the principal investor. Newsom’s baptism into


the world of wine and wine imports wasn’t happen- stance. Early in his father’s business career, Bill New- som served as a board mem- ber and attorney for the Getty-owned Trans-Inter- national Computer Invest- ment Corporation (TCI), a defense contractor con- nected with the clandestine world of international arms sales, and the CIA. Bill Newsom would fre-


quently travel to Europe with a TCI vice president, Otto von Bolschwing. Von Bolschwing introduced the older Newsom to importing wine from Argentina. And von Bolschwing’s connections to Argentina? Well, during WWII, he


was an SS Hauptsturmfüh- rer and Nazi intelligence of- ficer who reported to Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann and Josef


Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” were organizers of the Holocaust that aimed to exterminate European Jewry. They, and other Nazis,


fled to Argentina after the war. Von Bolschwing par- layed his intelligence cre- dentials into U.S. residency via Operation Paperclip. But in 1981, the Justice Depart- ment uncovered his Nazi past, stripping him of his citizenship. He died in 1982 before he could be deported.


50 NEWSMAX | OCTOBER 2025 Only four years after


starting his business with Getty’s help, Gavin New- som, then 27, helped Cali- fornia state Assemblyman and former Speaker Willie Brown in his campaign for mayor of San Francisco. Brown was termed out of the state Assembly in 1995 and needed a place to land. Mayor Brown returned


the favor when he appointed Newsom to the Parking and


Traffic Commission and then, only a year later, to a vacancy on the San Fran- cisco Board of Supervisors. Newsom, 29, was the


youngest member of the board representing Cali- fornia’s only consolidated city-county government. A year before Newsom’s


start in politics, then- Speaker Brown appointed Kamala Harris to two paid state commissions seen as


RAPID RISE Gavin Newsom, then 27, helped former state Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, left, in his campaign to be mayor of San Francisco. Brown returned the favor by appointing Newsom to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Three years later, he ran for mayor with the support of Brown, former President Bill Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore.


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