Eric Swalwell was knifed by the party that long sheltered him

For years, the Democratic establishment appeared to have known enough about Eric Swalwell to worry, whisper and warn. But not enough, apparently, to do anything.

As people recount it now, allegations about his behavior toward women have long circulated among Hill staff, California Democrats, Alameda County political figures, and reporters — some dating back to 2013, when he was first elected to Congress — yet none of this ever materialized into actual consequences for the now-disgraced former lawmaker.

Swalwell cultivated allies in Congress and fashioned himself into a minor Democratic star, a darling moralist of the #MeToo era who was entrusted by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with helping lead Donald Trump’s second impeachment in 2021. In 2016, Swalwell’s fellow Democrats crowned him the “Snapchat King of Congress,” a title meant to capture his ability to relate with young people. All the while, stories about his own conduct circulated widely enough that, by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) recent telling, “Every member in Congress [knew] not to let any young staffer get around Swalwell or Matt Gaetz.”

Last Friday, four women came forward with sexual assault allegations in what appeared to be a coordinated release. Within a day, his campaign went from a haze of rumor to an outright collapse. He suspended his bid for governor and on Monday resigned from Congress.

This looks very much like an act of intra-party political assassination, quite possibly abetted by primary rivals. Swalwell has denied wrongdoing, writing in his resignation letter he would fight the “allegation,” oddly in the singular, while his attorney dismissed the claims as a “political hit job.” But with the weight and number of allegations against him, together with the growing evidence that people had known of his depravity for years, the Democratic establishment cannot plausibly claim to have been blindsided.

Top Democrats are complicit in remaining quiet when their principles — the very same ones they demanded the American public accept wholesale at the height of #MeToo — demanded that they speak. They were willing to sit on credible allegations of abuse until it became politically expedient to sacrifice one of the Democratic Party’s loudest champions of “Believe All Women,” the moment those tactics served a political end.

In California’s jungle primary, party operatives had every reason to fear a scandal breaking only after Swalwell limped through June and emerged as the nominee. The cost to take him out early was low. His House seat was all but certain to remain in Democratic hands. Whoever made that call was no more morally righteous to the congressman himself.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), whom Swalwell once called his “best friend in the whole world,” first insisted he had no knowledge of the allegations. Then he conceded he had heard “rumors in Washington for many years” that Swalwell was a “flirty, social guy,” while claiming that personal closeness had clouded his judgment. He now calls Swalwell a “predator” who “lived a double life,” “lied to all of us,” and “manipulated” him. (Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) now says a woman is prepared to come forward with sexual assault allegations against Gallego.)

Pelosi, who spent years elevating Swalwell and vigorously defended him during the uproar over his ties to Christine Fang, the suspected Chinese intelligence operative, struck a similarly implausible note. Now, she claimed she had “no idea whatsoever.” The suggestion that Democrats had “turned a blind eye,” she insisted, was “absolutely not true.”

I’m not necessarily suggesting these party elites knew every sordid detail of Swalwell’s misconduct, but — even now, after the spectacle has unfolded, they incredibly persist in pretending to bear zero culpability for the arrangement that made it possible. Swalwell knew the party would avert its eyes as long as he played his part. But the congressman wanted more. In reaching for it he misjudged the central question of the affair, one the public still cannot answer: How much filth were his allies willing to sit on until it suited them to throw him to the wolves?

But none of this is especially shocking. It is disappointing, certainly, but the Swalwell affair is merely the latest indication of how politics has come to be practiced in the Machiavellian climate of a party establishment committed both to internal impunity and to public righteous indignation.

William Liang is a writer living in San Francisco.

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