Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-California) is facing growing pressure to vacate his congressional seat — on top of calls to drop out of the California gubernatorial race — over reports that a former staffer accused him of sexual assault and multiple others alleged sexual misconduct.
Several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said Sunday they would support a motion to expel Swalwell from Congress, after Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) promised to force such a vote this week. Luna added Sunday she would try to pair that resolution with one that would also expel Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for having an affair with a staff member who later set herself on fire and died.
Swalwell has denied the allegations as false and suggested they are politically motivated. Gonzales dropped his bid for reelection last month after acknowledging the affair but has insisted he will serve out the rest of his term, despite calls from GOP leaders to resign.
Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-New Mexico), Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), Ro Khanna (D-California) and Jared Huffman (D-California) were among the Democrats who publicly emerged this weekend to say they would vote to expel Swalwell along with Gonzales.
“This is not a partisan issue,” Jayapal said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” adding that it was important to send a message to staffers on Capitol Hill that their bosses cannot treat them in the ways Swalwell and Gonzales were alleged to have done.
“Men in power rely on the silence of the women they have abused,” Fernández, who is chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said in a statement. “Both Reps. Tony Gonzales and Eric Swalwell believed it was acceptable to sexually abuse staff and still run for and serve in elected office. They clearly did not expect there would be any consequences for their actions.”
A two-thirds majority vote is required to expel a member from Congress. The possibility of losing his congressional seat adds to the remarkable downfall of Swalwell, who less than two days ago had been considered a leading candidate in the California governor’s race to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).
In an article published Friday afternoon, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a former employee in Swalwell’s congressional office accused him of sexual assault. Hours later, CNN reported that three other women alleged other types of sexual misconduct by him. Both outlets appear to have included the account of an unidentified woman who said that Swalwell forcibly had sex with her in his New York City hotel room after they went out for drinks in April 2024.
Within hours, Swalwell lost his campaign chair and co-chair and the endorsements of nearly all his major Democratic supporters. On Saturday, his senior campaign and congressional staff issued a joint statement repudiating Swalwell’s behavior, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed it had opened an investigation into a sexual assault accusation of a former staff member.
The Washington Post has not been able to independently confirm the allegations against Swalwell. He did not respond to requests for comment Sunday about calls for him to also resign from his congressional seat, to which he was first elected in 2012.
In a video late Friday denying the allegations, Swalwell also said he had “certainly made mistakes in judgment in my past” that were “between me and my wife.” In a social media post, Huffman, a fellow California Democrat, said Swalwell had all but admitted “a per se abuse of power” under House ethics rules, which prohibit House members from having sexual relationships with subordinates.
Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.
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