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“Swalwell sat on the intel committee, and there were allegations he had a suspected Chinese spy, Fang Fang, who was associated with him in his office. Now, he was not found to have engaged in wrongdoing. But to me, my spidey senses from having worked at the Pentagon go off, which is, it was an open secret that he had issues with women, that he was somebody who was susceptible, potentially to heavy drinking, to impropriety with women.”
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That was Alyssa Farah Griffin on Monday’s episode of The View talking about disgraced and soon-to-be-ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). The words “open secret” have been bandied about on cable news and social media since a bombshell San Francisco Chronicle report regarding multiple credible allegations of sexual abuse and rape against Swalwell by former female staffers.
Steve Tavares, who writes the East Bay Insiders newsletter, noted on X that he has covered Swalwell since he was a member of the Dublin City Council.
“Shortly after being elected to Congress in 2013, his behavior towards women was known by all levels of our local government and the Alameda County Democratic Party,” Tavares said.
Translation: Basically, everyone in the California Democratic political machine knew about Swalwell’s behavior and did absolutely nothing.
The New York Times, which has never said one critical word about Swalwell during all his years in Congress, despite ample opportunities to do so, let the cat out of the bag in its reporting of the recent Swalwell allegations.
“Representative Eric Swalwell entered the race to become California’s next governor with a splashy debut on late-night TV in November. Jimmy Kimmel introduced him as a popular congressman who ‘does battle daily with the forces of MAGA — and the president does not like him at all.’
“If Californians knew anything about Mr. Swalwell, that was it,” the story reads. “Mr. Swalwell, a Democrat, had no experience in state government and few connections with leaders in a State Capitol run by his party. What he had was a media profile as a Trump antagonist, burnished by years of appearances on news shows that made him more familiar to voters than most of his competitors.”
Once dubbed the Snapchat King of Congress in 2016, Swalwell figured out long ago that provocative, over-the-top performances and being antagonistically anti-Trump are what get rewarded by legacy media.
“I should be working right now,” he said in one cringe video while bench pressing. “But Republicans shut down Congress. So instead, I’m pumping iron at the gym.”
“I should be working right now,” Swalwell said in another. “I should be in Congress. I should be voting to lower your costs. But, instead, I’m in a pool because Republicans sent everyone home because they don’t want to release the Epstein files.”
Overall, according to the Media Research Center, Swalwell has appeared on CNN and MS Now 50 times in the first 13 weeks of 2026 alone. That’s a remarkable number for one congressman. Of course, he was never booked to talk about actual policy, but simply to bash Trump with rehearsed one-liners designed to go viral. Here’s one of dozens of examples:
“Accountability is coming,” he declared on CNN recently, without evidence to support his allegation. “It’s all coming out. I hope this deters people from doing more of these deals for the president. We will subpoena the DOJ, but also private actors who’ve done these drug deals with the administration.”
So why are all of these horrific allegations against him coming out, in some cases, years later?
One theory being discussed involves California’s (ridiculous) jungle primary. In this system, only the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party. And as it stands now, according to the latest University of California, Berkeley, poll, Republican Steve Hilton leads with 17% of the vote, followed by Republican Chad Blanco with 16%. Tied for third are Swalwell and former Rep. Katie Porter, at 13%, and billionaire Tom Steyer at 10%.
If the June 2 primary were held today, both Republicans would advance, leaving Democrats without a candidate on the ballot despite Kamala Harris winning the state by 20 points in 2024. Democrats were simply splitting the pie too much, so somebody had to go. And that somebody was Swalwell because of the open secrets about him within the party that could be weaponized at a time of their choosing.
With Swalwell out of the race, the assumption is that enough of his support would default to Porter or Steyer, placing one of them against Hilton or Blanco. The goal for Democrats is simply to get anyone from the party into the general election, because according to the California secretary of state’s office, only 26% of registered voters there are Republican, down about 10 points from the last time a member of the GOP won a gubernatorial race.
From a media perspective, Swalwell has become the beneficiary of Trump being brought into seemingly every counterargument and story. Sure, what Swalwell has been accused of doing is bad, but why is Trump still in office after he was found liable for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll in a New York courtroom in 2024?
“Donald Trump had two juries in civil cases adjudicate that he had committed sexual abuse (against Carroll), I think is the phrase under New York Law, defame someone by denying it,” argued Bloomberg opinion columnist Robert Brownstein on CNN. “And, you know, there was nothing like that on the Republican side. I mean, if you drill down into the way voters in each coalition view allegations of sexual abuse, it is quite different.”
But this is not an apples-to-apples situation. Carroll’s case, to put it bluntly, was patently laughable. She claimed more than 25 years later that she was sexually abused by Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s. Which year in the ’90s? That’s unclear, because Carroll herself cannot recall the year.
“When do you believe Donald Trump assaulted you?” her attorney, Mike Ferrara, asked Carroll during her testimony Wednesday.
“This question, the when, the when, the date, has been something I’ve [been] constantly trying to pin down,” Carroll said.
“She can’t tell you the date that she claims to have been raped,” Trump attorney Joe Tacopina noted at the time. “She can’t tell you the month that she claims to have been raped. She can’t tell you the season. She can’t even tell you the year that she claims to have been raped by Donald Trump.”
This case should have been a nonstarter, but a New York jury found Trump liable and awarded Carroll $83 million.
In a truly bizarre and telling moment, she ran to MS Now’s Rachel Maddow after the verdict and shared exactly what she wanted to do with Trump’s money. Per the official transcript:
CARROLL: “I have such great ideas for all the good I’m going to do with this money! First thing, Rachel, you and I are going to go shopping.”
(LAUGHTER)
CARROLL: “We’re going to get completely new wardrobes, new shoes, motorcycle for [her lawyer], new fishing rod for [her other lawyer]. Rachel, what do you want, a penthouse?”
(LAUGHTER)
CARROLL: “It’s yours, Rachel!”
MADDOW (laughing): “Nothing.”
CARROLL: “Penthouse and France? You want France? You want to go fishing in France?”
(LAUGHTER).
Meanwhile, more than 30 women have come forward with allegations against Swalwell. The allegations are detailed, and damning text messages exist. At least 55 former and current Swalwell staffers had called on him to resign before he announced his intention to do so on Monday. And on Tuesday, another accuser, Lonna Drewes, came forward with a horrific 2018 alleged account of the congressman drugging her before taking her to his hotel room.
“When I arrived at his hotel room, I was already incapacitated, and I couldn’t move my arms or my body,” she recalled. “He raped me, and he choked me. And while he was choking me, I lost consciousness, and I thought I died. I did not consent to any sexual activity.”
California Democrats will now be faced with a choice of Porter, who has been verbally abusive of staffers in the past, and the bland Steyer, a billionaire who is the favorite to win, according to the betting markets.
DAVID AXELROD’S ART OF POLITICAL WAR
Moving forward, Swalwell may go from becoming California’s next governor and a possible presidential candidate for the second time to being criminally convicted and even incarcerated.
The useful idiot groomed to be an attack dog of Trump to an adoring media quickly and finally became useless in the eyes of his own party.
