His father ran Pat Brown's campaign for San Francisco district attorney, who then later became Governor of California.
[2] Newsom went to the University of San Francisco, followed by Stanford Law School and was admitted to the California Bar in 1962.
TCI went bankrupt in 1971 after what the Sacramento District Attorney called "the biggest stock fraud in California history".
For most of 1969 and 1970, Newsom traveled across Europe alongside former SS Gestapo member Otto von Bolschwing who had been brought to the U.S. by the CIA under Operation Paperclip and appointed TCI's president by Getty due to his former Nazi intelligence connections and their value in obtaining defense technology contracts.
[6] An advocate of rehabilitative justice, Newsom was also part of a panel of judges which ruled that the perpetrators of the 1976 Chowchilla mass kidnapping and live burial would be eligible for parole.
[2] Newsom was a keen environmentalist and served on the boards of both the Sierra Club Foundation and the Environmental Defense Fund.
[6] Newsom died of ulcerative colitis at his home in San Francisco on December 12, 2018, at the age of 84, over a month after his son Gavin was elected governor.