Eric Swalwell Thought He Was Untouchable — Until He Wasn’t
The allegations that ended Swalwell’s gubernatorial bid fit a longstanding pattern of behavior.
By Melanie Mason, Jeremy B. White, Daniel Lippman and Riley Rogerson
The Toyota Corolla shuttling Eric Swalwell to the San Francisco airport was already running well over the speed limit. It wasn’t enough.
“‘Go as fast as you can. Go 90 or whatever,’” Dean Wallace, the staffer behind the wheel, recalled his boss telling him. “‘We’re not going to get in trouble. Just keep going.’”
That ride to the airport more than 13 years ago, when Swalwell was about to miss his flight to Washington for his new membership orientation, was no one-off. As an ascendant Democratic House member, he would push his staff to drive so dangerously from one appointment to the next that one former congressional aide said she racked up numerous tickets for speeding or running red lights and was once chewed out by Capitol Police after an especially reckless maneuver. As a candidate for California governor, he’d say of the navigation app, “Waze is just the start of a negotiation,” and encourage his driver to disregard traffic laws, according to a staffer familiar with his campaign travel.
It was an impulsive sense of urgency that reflected, almost too neatly, the ambitions and instincts that propelled Swalwell to the upper ranks of the Democratic Party and a credible shot at becoming California’s next governor. Not only was he willing to take risks to get to where he wanted to go, he was convinced — or at least, seemed to be — that he’d escape the consequences.
Until last week, when his political career collapsed entirely.
Swalwell has now been accused by multiple women of sexual assault; at least two others claim he harrassed them with unwanted come-ons and explicit photos. He faces criminal investigations into separate rape accusations in Manhattan and Los Angeles, and the Department of Justice also opened an investigation; he has denied all allegations of assault, though he has acknowledged “personal failings.” He withdrew from the governor’s race and resigned from Congress before his colleagues moved to expel him.
Swalwell and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
His downfall, beyond prompting a reckoning on the Hill about how such a prominent politician could act with impunity for so long, has forced a reappraisal of Swalwell among his one-time friends and allies. POLITICO Magazine spoke with 30 people who had a front-row seat to his rise from the Bay Area to Washington, including lawmakers, staffers and consultants. Many were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the now-disgraced politician.
They describe a man with considerable talents, including a dogged work ethic, a natural camera presence fit for cable news and persuasion skills honed from his early days as a prosecutor. He projected a certainty that bordered on invincibility — and in some cases, imbued that sense in others.
“When you’re just living in D.C., politicians on the Hill almost create an alternate universe where they and their staffers feel like they can make up their own rules. You can create your own reality,” said the former staffer who said her reckless driving at Swalwell’s insistence saddled her with scores of tickets. “And that’s kind of how I felt when I was working for him, like the rules don’t apply. And we can make anything happen.”
Such was the mentality of a man who would run for governor despite allegedly having a history of sexual misconduct that could detonate his career at any moment. It’s a man whose grandiose ambitions included the presidency or, as a consolation prize, CIA director.
Before his ill-fated presidential run in 2019, which only lasted three months, Alex Evans, a former senior Swalwell adviser, put together an informal inventory of possible reasons he could lose.
The first word on the list: hubris.
Swalwell’s jump into national politics was audacious from its 2012 start. Here was a 31-year-old county prosecutor taking on Pete Stark, an East Bay Democrat who had represented the area since 1972. Swalwell had just been elected a city councilmember in Dublin, his hometown, where his signature achievement had been designating the city as part of the Livermore Valley Wine Region.
Stark was a liberal institution, but he was also pushing 80 and increasingly seen as abrasive and erratic. Swalwell, taking advantage of California’s new top-two primary system, saw a path as a moderate Democrat with law enforcement bona fides that could appeal to Republicans.
“The strategy was: pull a lot of the moderate Democrats in the Tri-Valley and get Republicans who really didn’t like Pete Stark to vote for him,” said Wallace, who was field manager for the campaign. “That was a real easy sell at the doors when it was a Dem-on-Dem.”
Swalwell outhustled the aging Stark, canvassing the district practically every night. The candidate, who was single at the time after divorcing his first wife in 2010, would also use his active dating life to supplement the campaign’s field program, Wallace recalled.
“There would be volunteers who would show up to knock on doors and it was clear they thought they had some sort of relationship with him, or would come out because they were romantically interested,” Wallace said. “And he would rope them in to knock doors and ignore them. They were confused, and it would happen a lot.”
Swalwell beat Stark by a convincing margin. And within a few years in Washington, he had cultivated a powerful ally: Nancy Pelosi. The top Democrat in the House, who had been facing pressure to bring fresh faces into leadership, took a liking to Swalwell and asked him to re-nominate her as House Democratic Leader in 2014. She elevated her fellow Californian to a powerful post on the House Democratic Steering Committee and coveted assignments on the Judiciary and Intelligence committees. He became a top Trump antagonist and played roles in both of the president’s impeachments, impressing fellow Democrats.
“I’ll never forget those days of working on impeachment as a team, as a real team with humility around the table, each of us taking our part,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Pennsylvania Democrat. “The team feeling — I don’t think I’ll ever match it again. So it’s devastating to me that we are in this position.”
His colleagues were less impressed with his decision to run for president in 2019, which struck many of them as absurd. They were baffled that Swalwell, who had fostered an enviable alliance with Pelosi, would endanger that goodwill for a longshot bid.
“My God, it was an embarrassment,” one House Democrat said. “She had put him in important positions, and then he turns around and runs his delusional race for president.”
But Swalwell, who was 38 at the time, believed he could capitalize on his Iowa roots, having been born there, and his working-class upbringing in what was known as “Scrublin,” to distinguish himself as a regular-Joe millennial with relatable student debt. As he entered the primary, those who had followed his career from the Bay Area saw him shift away from his moderate, law-and-order persona.
“He moved further and further left as he was leaning into his presidential run,” said former state Sen. Steve Glazer, a Democrat who represented a nearby area. “When you change your political skin, it does make people more wary about where your heart is.”
Meanwhile, Swalwell, who married his wife Brittany in 2016, was getting noticed for his behavior toward women. One California-based campaign consultant recalled it was frequently a topic of discussion on the 2020 presidential trail.
“Everyone was coming up to me saying, ‘Oh, you’re from the Bay Area, do you know Eric Swalwell? He hit on my friend,’” the consultant said.
Among the people who worked for the short-lived presidential campaign was a young woman who joined his staff soon afterward. She said Swalwell, who was 17 years her senior, began coming onto her within weeks. That woman would later go on to share her experience, including alleging that he twice sexually assaulted her, with the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN — stories that would decimate his career.
If there was one constant in Swalwell’s trajectory, it was television.
“With Eric, it was always about TV time,” said Morgan King, who worked on Swalwell’s city council run and then his first congressional campaign. “He wanted to be on TV as much as possible.”
His appetite for media exposure became insatiable during the Trump era. Staffers became experts in finding places where he could film hits on quick turnaround: mobile studios, hotels, airports, even a local bookstore in his district. His motto for his staff working to get him on television was “ABP: Always Be Pitching.”
Swalwell spoke in aphorisms. He’d ask staffers “where’s the wow?” as they brainstormed new ideas to get attention. He encouraged out-of-the-box thinking, especially in digital communications. Swalwell’s media omnipresence could grate on fellow members of his caucus, but some on his staff felt empowered by his support to get beyond the cookie-cutter communications strategies that were commonplace on the Hill.
As communications became a focal point in his office, policy took a backseat. After Republicans booted Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee in 2023, citing “national security concerns” over his years-old association with Christine Fang, a suspected Chinese intelligence operative, there was a notable change in Swalwell’s demeanor, a second former staffer said. (Swalwell cut off contact with Fang in 2015 after being alerted by the FBI; he was never accused of wrongdoing.)
“He loved it. It was a source of pride,” the staffer said of Swalwell’s work on the committee. After being yanked off, “he was less engaged in the work … he was pissed.”
Swalwell, like any lawmaker, had distinctive quirks and habits. He was a disciplined exerciser who insisted roughly 90 minutes of his schedule every day be blocked out for a workout, which he called “Fitness Caucus.” He gave his personal cell phone number out freely to journalists, influencers, celebrities, potential job-seekers and his constituents, fostering a sense of familiarity.
“It made people think, ‘My congressman cares about me. … I have a direct line to my congressman, my congressman that’s on the news every night, my congressman that’s leading the fight against Trump,’” said the second former staffer. “‘I have his cell phone. I can reach out to him whenever I want.’”
Some former staffers said they worried that Swalwell’s tendencies raised ethical concerns. He would have aides in his congressional office package gifts paid for by his campaign to send to supporters, according to two former staffers who saw the gifts — a potential violation of House rules forbidding official resources being used for political activity. He was also cavalier about posting content about his official duties on his campaign social media accounts and vice versa, sometimes brushing aside warnings from staff that this was against House rules.
Swalwell and his then-chief of staff Yardena Wolf would “aggressively” peddle a political fundraising start-up they co-founded, according to NOTUS, which said the pitches were potentially in violation of House ethics rules. The Swalwell campaign told the outlet that Swalwell and Wolf had consulted with the House Ethics Committee and that the lawmaker received no income from the company.
As Swalwell’s profile grew, so did his exposure to the trappings of the office. He embraced it all.
“It was a meteoric rise of the likes of which you don’t see very often,” said former Rep. Jackie Speier, a fellow California Democrat. “And one of the things that happens in Congress is people who start to feel that they’re empowered and untouchable take it to a level that reflects what we see over and over again, where they lose sight of what’s real and imagined.”
He was especially taken with the opulent luxury of Los Angeles and the glitz of Hollywood. He styled himself an industry insider, taking executive production credits on two films. (He removed himself from one after a labor dispute during filming put him crosswise with the unions he was courting for his gubernatorial bid.)
He became especially close with Stephen J. Cloobeck, a billionaire timeshare magnate who often hosted Swalwell at his Beverly Hills estate. Swalwell often taped media hits from Cloobeck’s home, displaying an access to wealth a working-class kid from “Scrublin” could only imagine. (Cloobeck has since said he’s cutting off ties with Swalwell and leaving the Democratic Party.)
Growing up, “he had to switch houses 11 or 13 times,” said a former campaign staffer. “Having that level of instability and then having this opportunity to play padel at this rich person’s house or pseudo-live in a rich person’s house and getting the privileges they might have — when he’s going to nice dinners and nice fundraisers, he started to get attuned to that.”
Throughout it all were the rumors that persisted about Swalwell and women. Female staffers on the Hill quietly warned each other about his late-night texts or his pursuit of subordinate employees. His reputation for being overly-familiar was well-established.
“It wasn’t just with me. It was with a lot of girls,” said one female Washington lobbyist. “Every time you met him, he was just very handsy. His hand would always be on your arm, or the hug would always last a little too long.”
Fellow members acknowledged hearing rumors about partying or indiscretions, but several said that nothing they heard rose to the level of a House Ethics infraction or, worse, criminal behavior. Nor would it be something they’d want to put on the radar of Swalwell’s most powerful ally, Pelosi.
“The rumors that we all began to hear about Eric are not the kind of things that people would talk to Nancy Pelosi about,” the House Democrat said. “She’s in a higher echelon. You don’t just sit around and gossip about people’s social life or extracurricular acts with Nancy Pelosi.”
During an interview at George Washington University this week, the former speaker said she had never before heard complaints or allegations about Swalwell’s behavior.
It was a “smart decision” for Swalwell to resign, she said. “Probably five times in the history of our country has anybody been ejected from the Congress. Why should you be the sixth? If you have a challenge that you have to address, it’s best addressed not as a candidate for governor and not as a member of Congress.”
Swalwell’s failed presidential run made it clear he saw himself as more than a House member. After Joe Biden won the White House in 2020, Swalwell fixed his sights on leading the CIA, and a staffer prepared a memo for him on the biographies of previous leaders of the agency.
His aide wrote a nine-page report, compiling the vast experience that top officials historically had. The unspoken subtext was that Swalwell held little of those qualifications. The staffer said they also told him bluntly that the allegations he had a relationship with Fang, a suspected Chinese intelligence operative, whether true or not, would foreclose any possibility of Swalwell becoming CIA director. The congressmember responded indignantly, the staffer said.
Despite his overt search for another job, some of his staffers were surprised when they heard he was considering a run for California governor. He had never mentioned any interest in the post before.
His lack of knowledge about the myriad complex policy issues in California meant that his campaign would be premised primarily on anti-Trump bromides. To the political class, his ignorance was sold as an asset, an opportunity to influence an incoming governor without rigid beliefs. But inside the campaign, staffers were troubled by his vagueness.
“At this stage of his career, to be a blank canvas is really odd,” a second former campaign staffer said.
Swalwell launched his campaign in November on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show — an echo of him announcing his candidacy for president with a Stephen Colbert appearance seven years earlier. It was a remarkably late start to run in the nation’s most populous state, and at first, the campaign essentially operated out of two Cadillac Escalades, one in the Bay Area and one in Los Angeles.
He maintained some of his old habits — the daily workout of 90 minutes or more, the stays at luxury hotels — even though they strained the candidate’s time and the campaign’s budget. He also kept up his devotion to appearing on national news. But he was resistant to appearing on local television stations, even though they were one of the best ways to reach older, reliable voters. Among his reasons, according to staffers: The lighting for the local channels looked cheap.
Swalwell projected confidence the race would go his way, referring to himself constantly as the frontrunner even though most polls showed him locked in a three-way tie among the Democratic contenders. But he also at times revealed a siege mentality that forces were conspiring to bring him down.
“He would oftentimes say, ‘Tom Steyer put $100 million into ads just to come after me. Kash Patel is coming after me. Trump is coming after me,’” the first former campaign staffer said. “It’s funny — he said he was always on offense, but here you are acting like you’re the victim in every situation.”
Looking back, some on the campaign saw other red flags. One staffer recalled feeling suspicious when Rep. Jamie Raskin — whose backing Swalwell deeply coveted — abruptly halted an endorsement that was far along in the works. Raskin confirmed that Swalwell was looking for his support, but said he took his cues from Pelosi, who had still not endorsed her one-time protege.
“She also kept her counsel and hung back, which was a signal to me that we needed to wait to see how the dynamics of the race were going to unfold,” Raskin said.
Those dynamics are now well-known following a pair of bombshell reports that set off a chain reaction starting with rescinded endorsements and staff resignations.
Christine Pelosi, who had become friends with Swalwell when he was an upstart House member under her mother’s tutelage, was the first to tell the former speaker about the allegations.
“She was absolutely shocked when I told her,” the younger Pelosi said. Soon after, her mother called Swalwell and told him to step down from the governor’s race.
“A lot of us are going through it right now: ‘Why didn’t we know more? Why couldn’t we have protected people better?’” Christine Pelosi said. “You can only act on what you know. To the people that knew the rumors, you could have told us, the people close to him.”
Earlier that day, Swalwell had adamantly told his campaign staff that the as-yet-unpublished reports were false. They did not hear from him as a team again.
“He puts in his statements that he is sorry to his staff, but he has not reached out and apologized,” said the first ex-campaign staffer. “It feels performative to say ‘I am sorry to my staff’ in front of millions of people that are watching his statements or looking at his Instagram and social, but you’re not actually saying sorry to your staff when the doors are closed and the spotlight is not on you.”
Swalwell has maintained his public silence since then, communicating only through a statement on his social media, his resignation letter and his attorney. But around him is a clamor for a reckoning about a political culture that turns a blind eye to open secrets and failed to hold him accountable for so long. And there is an anger that one man’s personal failings could end up causing so much destruction.
“His behavior was, above all, a violation of these women’s rights and an assault on their integrity. It was also a major betrayal of his wife and his family,” Raskin said. “But a lot of colleagues feel as if we were betrayed too. You know, we’re in the fight of our lives to defend the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law. And Eric Swalwell was an active participant in all of these fights.”
Swalwell’s demise has raised many questions, including whether his behavior should have set alarms off sooner, when actions stop being gossip-fodder and instead become actionable, and whether Congress and other institutions are equipped for victims and others to flag problems before they become criminal. In California, many establishment Democrats are reeling from having come so close to helping elevate Swalwell to higher office despite the warning signs.
But one question is especially pervasive: How could Swalwell run for governor knowing a high-profile campaign could surface such damaging baggage?
To Evans, who saw Swalwell’s hubris as his biggest vulnerability, the answer was simple — that same boundary-pushing instinct, the same belief that he was untouchable, was still at work all these years later.
“It’s that risk tolerance that served him well for so long — that wasn’t going away,” Evans said. “That, or he believes what he’s been telling everyone.”
