Disgraced Congressman Eric Swalwell landed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday and was greeted not by a driver but by FBI agents with a warrant. They took his cellphone, his electronics, and personal property.
The next day, they hit his house in Northeast Washington, D.C.
The 45-year-old former Democratic congressman from California is now at the center of a federal sexual misconduct investigation that has apparently been building since at least April 2026, which is when he dropped out of the governor's race and resigned from Congress after being accused of raping and acting inappropriately with multiple women on his staff. In addition to the FBI investigation, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department have also opened their own investigations into Swalwell — meaning this isn't one jurisdiction fishing. It's three.
Swalwell was reportedly cooperative during the airport encounter, which is the smart move when FBI agents are standing between you and the baggage carousel holding a search warrant. No charges have been filed as yet.
But the mechanics here are worth paying attention to. The FBI didn't subpoena records through a lawyer. They didn't send a polite letter requesting voluntary cooperation. They confronted a former sitting member of Congress at an airport and physically seized his personal devices. Then, less than 24 hours later, they executed a second warrant at his residence. That's not a preliminary inquiry. That's a case with enough evidence to convince a federal judge — twice in two days — that there was probable cause to search.
For those keeping score at home, this is the same Eric Swalwell who sat on the House Intelligence Committee while maintaining what was later confirmed to be a intimate relationship with a Chinese intelligence operative. The same Eric Swalwell who spent four years on cable news accusing a sitting president of being a foreign agent. The same Eric Swalwell who ran for president in 2019 on the platform that he was the serious, trustworthy adult in the room.
The "foreign intelligence compromise" chapter was supposed to be the low point of the Swalwell story. Democratic leadership knew about the Fang Fang situation and kept him on the Intelligence Committee anyway, which told you everything about how seriously they took national security when it conflicted with protecting one of their own.
Now the FBI — the same FBI that Swalwell once championed as the last line of defense against Donald Trump — is executing search warrants on his personal electronics across two states. There is a specific kind of irony in watching a man who built his brand on demanding investigations get investigated. There's a more uncomfortable kind of irony in the nature of the allegations.
Three separate jurisdictions don't open investigations into a former congressman over rumors. The DOJ doesn't get warrants to seize a phone at an airport because someone filed a complaint that went nowhere. And the FBI doesn't follow up with a home search the next morning unless the phone gave them reason to keep looking.
The man who wanted to be trusted with the nuclear codes can't currently be trusted with his own cellphone.