Jeanine Pirro, the chief federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., wants to sit down with the women who say Rep. Eric Swalwell assaulted them, and she is prepared to crack open the confidential settlement agreements that Congress used to keep those allegations quiet. Pirro made the declaration on the John Solomon Reports podcast this week, answering with a blunt "You're darn right" when asked whether she would pierce those settlements to reexamine material evidence, Just the News reported.
The announcement lands days after Swalwell resigned from Congress, ending a seven-term career that began in 2013, and withdrew from what had been a front-running bid for California governor. At least four women have come forward with allegations spanning incidents in California, New York, and Washington, D.C., with claims dating back to 2018. One former staffer alleged Swalwell raped her on two occasions when she was too intoxicated to consent.
Swalwell has strongly denied the allegations, calling them false. But the bipartisan fallout was swift: lawmakers from both parties called for his expulsion, and the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation.
If Pirro's office successfully obtains the secret agreements, the consequences reach well beyond one congressman. Federal prosecutors who pierce settlement agreements as part of a probe could allow accusers to testify before a grand jury despite any nondisclosure agreement. The settlement itself, and the underlying facts it was designed to bury, would become available to Pirro's investigative team.
That prospect should unsettle every member of Congress who has relied on confidential payouts to make misconduct complaints disappear. A Real Clear Policy article introduced into the congressional record in 2024 estimated that the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights paid out $18.2 million to settle 291 cases of misconduct or discrimination between 1997 and 2021. That is nearly two decades of taxpayer-funded silence.
The system was partially reformed, but the underlying culture of secrecy has proved durable. Earlier this year, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced a bill to publicly disclose those settlements. Congress overwhelmingly tabled it in a bipartisan vote, members of both parties choosing, together, to keep the lid on.
That vote deserves a second look now. When lawmakers had the chance to open these records voluntarily, they refused. It took a federal prosecutor signaling subpoena power to move the needle even slightly. The pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched previous efforts to hold Democratic lawmakers accountable run into institutional resistance.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in on Tuesday, saying she had no knowledge of the allegations against Swalwell. She called his resignation "the right thing to do...to not subject members to have to take a vote on something like that."
Pirro was not impressed. She told the podcast that Pelosi "doesn't want the Congresspeople to have to vote...a thumbs down on someone who's part of their club, as though they shouldn't have to admit that they're against sexual harassment."
The timeline makes Pelosi's claimed ignorance worth examining. Swalwell served seven terms. Pelosi would have overseen settlements during four of those years. The allegations date back to 2018, squarely within her leadership tenure. Whether she knew about specific complaints or not, the system that kept them hidden operated under her watch.
Her framing is revealing. She did not express concern for the women. She did not demand transparency. She expressed relief that her colleagues would not have to cast an uncomfortable vote. That tells you where the institutional priorities lie, and have always lain, on Capitol Hill.
The Swalwell case does not exist in isolation. Washington has spent years wrestling with the question of whether its most powerful figures operate under a different set of rules. The Justice Department itself has been at the center of that debate, as seen in recent moves to reset DOJ leadership amid questions about political accountability.
Congress built a system, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, the confidential settlement process, the bipartisan omertà, that functioned less as a safeguard for victims and more as a containment mechanism for scandal. Staffers who came forward were funneled into a process that ended with a check and a gag order. The member went back to work. The public never found out.
Pirro's willingness to use prosecutorial tools to break that cycle marks a genuine shift. Grand jury testimony compelled over the objection of an NDA is not a press conference. It is not a leaked rumor. It is sworn testimony with legal consequences for dishonesty on either side.
The question is whether the broader Justice Department apparatus will support that effort or quietly slow-walk it. Politically charged investigations involving sitting or recently departed members of Congress have a long history of stalling out. Readers who followed the D.C. grand jury proceedings involving Democratic lawmakers earlier this year know how difficult it can be to move these cases forward.
Significant gaps remain. The specific settlement agreements Pirro may target have not been identified publicly. Whether any settlements involving Swalwell specifically exist has not been confirmed. The names of the accusers have not been disclosed. And Swalwell himself, while denying the allegations broadly, has not been quoted in detail on the substance of the claims.
The lawmakers from both parties who called for his expulsion have not been named in reporting so far. Nor is it clear how the House Ethics Committee investigation will proceed now that Swalwell has resigned, committees often lose jurisdiction, or at least urgency, once a member leaves.
These are not small details. They will determine whether Pirro's probe produces accountability or becomes another Washington investigation that generates headlines before fading into procedural limbo. The DOJ's track record on politically sensitive probes gives reason for cautious skepticism.
Swalwell's resignation removes him from Congress but does not remove him from legal exposure. If the alleged conduct occurred in Washington, D.C., Pirro has clear jurisdiction. If settlements were funded through the congressional workplace system, those records exist somewhere. And if accusers were silenced by agreements they signed under institutional pressure, a federal prosecutor with grand jury authority may be the only person in Washington with both the power and the willingness to let them speak.
Congress had every opportunity to clean this up on its own. Mace gave them a bill. They buried it. Pelosi gave them a framing. She made it about protecting colleagues from an awkward vote. Neither response had anything to do with the women who say they were harmed.
The broader pattern is not new. Washington protects its own until the cost of protection exceeds the cost of accountability. That calculus may finally be shifting, not because Congress chose transparency, but because a federal prosecutor decided to stop asking permission.
When $18.2 million in taxpayer money buys silence instead of justice, the system is not broken. It is working exactly as the people who built it intended. Pirro's job now is to prove that someone in this city still answers to the public, not the club.
