Jeffrey Magram’s lawsuit heads to the discovery phase, which could provide a window into how Newsom handles accusations of anti-Semitism
A former commander of the California National Guard who says Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) “facilitated” an anti-Semitic campaign that resulted in his wrongful termination will have his day in court, a judge ruled Friday. The move could cause a major headache for Newsom ahead of his expected 2028 presidential campaign.
Former Brigadier General Jeffrey Magram is suing the state of California and Adjutant General Matthew Beevers, a Newsom appointee who has faced allegations of denigrating a Jewish subordinate as a “kike” lawyer. Magram alleges that Newsom “facilitated and ratified” a Beevers-driven campaign of anti-Semitic discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against him that started after Magram defended a fellow Jew from Beevers’s anti-Semitic rants and ended with Newsom’s office signing an order to dismiss Magram in November 2022.
Sacramento Superior Court judge Richard K. Sueyoshi rejected the Newsom administration’s efforts to quash Magram’s lawsuit in an Oct. 31 ruling authorizing six of its eight counts to proceed toward a trial. The ruling will force the Newsom administration to comply with document discovery and deposition requests that Magram says have been ignored since he filed his lawsuit in January 2024.
The discovery process could provide a window into how Newsom’s administration handles accusations of anti-Semitism and risks becoming a political liability for the Democratic governor ahead of a 2028 presidential campaign.
“Beevers and the California Military Department have disregarded complying with public laws and multiple legal requests for documents,” Magram told the Washington Free Beacon. “We are very much looking forward to the facts coming out in this case and for the truth to be heard by all.”
Those records include documents that may shed light on Newsom’s response to several letters Magram wrote to the governor’s office warning that Beevers was engaged in a personal vendetta against him driven by his “bigoted beliefs” against Jewish people. Magram alleges in his lawsuit that Newsom “chose to ignore this information and directly ratify the anti-Semitic acts of Beevers” when his office signed off on his termination in November 2022.
Magram’s termination from the California National Guard deprived the force of one of its most experienced firefighters as large swaths of Los Angeles burned in January, the Free Beacon reported.
The Newsom administration has defended Beevers against charges of anti-Semitism. In December 2022, the governor ordered an investigation into allegations that Beevers denigrated his subordinate, Major General Jay Coggan, as a “kike” lawyer during a private conversation with his predecessor and fellow Newsom appointee, former Adjutant General David Baldwin. But the California Military Department Inspector General closed the investigation just weeks later on a technicality.
Though Baldwin testified to Beevers’s “kike” lawyer comment under oath, investigators said they couldn’t substantiate the allegation because Baldwin didn’t file a written report of the incident to himself, the Free Beacon reported. Months later, in May 2023, Newsom appointed Beevers to lead the California National Guard.
Newsom spokesman Izzy Gardon told the Free Beacon in September 2024 that the anti-Semitism allegations against Beevers “were thoroughly and independently investigated by the appropriate authorities and were found to be fully unsubstantiated.”
As for Magram, Beevers relied heavily on a 2021 report from the U.S. Air Force’s inspector general to justify his removal from service. The report, which Magram says is flawed, claims he improperly used subordinates to transport him to personal appointments. A Free Beacon review of an unredacted version of that report found that Magram was on military orders for most of what investigators described as “personal errands,” and the report relied on testimony from witnesses with clear conflicts of interest.
Beevers issued a memo in June 2022 saying the inspector general report caused him to lose faith in Magram’s ability to serve as a senior military leader. But Magram’s personnel file tells a different story. “Lives saved” is a common refrain in Magram’s officer performance reports, which are replete with glowing reviews for his record leading the California Air National Guard’s response to some of the most catastrophic wildfires in state history.
Still, Newsom sided with Beevers, with his office issuing an order to separate Magram from state active duty on Nov. 10, 2022.
The Newsom administration has yet to respond to any of Magram’s allegations since he filed his lawsuit in January 2024, instead arguing in motions that the case should be dismissed entirely because of the Feres doctrine, a legal doctrine that arose from a 1950 Supreme Court case that bars servicemembers from suing the military for personal injuries sustained in the performance of their duties.
But Sueyoshi, the Sacramento Superior Court judge, said the Newsom administration’s interpretation of the law was incorrect. The judge wrote in his Oct. 31 ruling that the Feres doctrine was not intended to shield the military from the legal consequences of subjecting a general to a campaign of anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination, as Magram alleges in his lawsuit.
“Put another way, this Court cannot accept defendants’ proposition that the antisemitic behavior attributed to defendant Beevers is fairly characterized as being ‘incident to service,'” Sueyoshi wrote in his ruling authorizing Magram’s case to proceed to trial, though a date is yet to be set with discovery still in its infancy.
Newsom’s office did not return a request for comment.
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