Federal agents armed with a search warrant confronted former Rep. Eric Swalwell at San Francisco International Airport and seized his phone and laptop as part of a criminal investigation into sexual misconduct allegations from at least four women.
FBI agents stopped the 45-year-old former California Democrat at SFO on Saturday evening, presenting a search warrant and taking his white Apple iPhone, charging cable, wall charger, and Apple MacBook Pro at approximately 8:25 p.m., the New York Post reported. Additional undisclosed potential evidence was also collected. The search warrant was signed by FBI Special Agent Kyle R. Biebesheimer.
The airport seizure was only the beginning. The following day, federal agents executed additional court-approved search warrants at Swalwell's Washington, D.C., home, the Washington Examiner reported, seizing more materials. Well-placed sources told the Daily Mail, which first broke the story, that Swalwell cooperated throughout both encounters.
Cooperation or not, the weekend raids mark a dramatic escalation. A man who once sat on the House Intelligence Committee and aspired to the presidency now faces a federal criminal probe driven by accusations from at least four women, and a trail of declassified intelligence files that have already shredded his public credibility.
Swalwell resigned from Congress in April after a former staffer alleged he raped her twice, once in 2019 and once in 2024, when she was too intoxicated to consent. The Manhattan District Attorney's office confirmed in April that it was investigating Swalwell after the former staffer alleged one of the assaults occurred at a New York City hotel during a charity gala in 2024, AP News reported.
Three additional women subsequently came forward with their own allegations of sexual misconduct. Swalwell has long maintained his innocence on all counts.
His departure from Congress also forced him to suspend his California gubernatorial campaign. The political wreckage has been swift, voters in his former district are already moving to replace him, and the scandal has become a case study in a party's failure to police its own ranks.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg publicly encouraged "survivors and anyone with knowledge of these allegations to contact our Special Victims Division," National Review reported. That statement alone signals the breadth of what investigators believe they may still uncover.
Arick Fudali, the attorney representing accuser Lonna Drewes, spoke bluntly about what the weekend searches mean for his client's case.
"We are encouraged to learn about the escalation of the FBI's investigation into the allegations against Eric Swalwell."
The FBI itself declined to comment, Just The News reported. No charges have been publicly filed against Swalwell. But the execution of search warrants at two locations in two days, requiring a federal judge to find probable cause that evidence of a crime would be found, is not the act of an investigation winding down.
Swalwell's post-resignation conduct has raised its own questions. He has funneled over $360,000 in leftover campaign funds to a celebrity defense lawyer since leaving office, a sign that whatever he says publicly about innocence, his legal team is preparing for a serious fight.
The sexual misconduct probe is not the only cloud over Swalwell's record. Files declassified by President Donald Trump revealed that Swalwell admitted to the FBI he had a sexual relationship with Christine Fang, the suspected Chinese intelligence operative widely known as "Fang Fang." National Review reported that in a May 2015 FBI interview, Swalwell said he had physical relations with Fang on "a handful of occasions" at his apartment before his 2012 election to Congress.
Swalwell never publicly acknowledged the relationship. The declassified FBI files also revealed the bureau had at one point attempted to recruit Fang without her knowledge, a detail that underscores how deeply enmeshed the intelligence community's interest in this matter runs.
The New York Post reported that Swalwell described his involvement with Fang as having "occasionally hooked up", a characterization that stands in stark contrast to the years he spent publicly deflecting and denying any intimate relationship with a woman U.S. intelligence officials have identified as a suspected spy.
For a member of the House Intelligence Committee, someone entrusted with the nation's most sensitive classified information, the gap between what Swalwell told the FBI privately and what he told the public is not a minor discrepancy. It is a pattern of evasion that now intersects with a criminal probe on an entirely separate front.
The personal consequences have been severe. The New York Post reported that Swalwell's wife has been spotted living separately from him and was seen without her wedding ring, a detail that, while personal, reflects the real-world wreckage these allegations have caused beyond the political arena.
Swalwell's fall is not an isolated event for Democrats. His case fits a pattern of candidate scandals that the party has struggled to explain, raising hard questions about who gets elevated, who gets protected, and how long warning signs go ignored.
The timeline alone is damning. The first alleged rape occurred in 2019. The second in 2024. Swalwell remained in Congress, ran for governor, and continued to enjoy the full backing of his party until the allegations became impossible to suppress. Only then did the resignation come, not as accountability, but as damage control.
Sen. John Fetterman, no stranger to bucking his own party, has drawn a direct line between Democratic loyalty and the party's willingness to look the other way on Swalwell. When a sitting Democratic senator uses your name as shorthand for institutional failure, the reckoning is no longer theoretical.
Several critical questions remain open. No formal charges have been announced. The precise scope of the federal probe, whether it involves a grand jury, how many jurisdictions are coordinating, and what the seized devices may contain, is unknown. Swalwell's legal team has not issued a public statement responding to the weekend searches.
The FBI's silence is standard practice during active investigations, but the pace of events speaks for itself. A search warrant at an airport on Saturday. A raid on a D.C. home on Sunday. Multiple law enforcement agencies circling. At least four accusers. And a set of declassified intelligence files that have already proven Swalwell was not telling the truth about his past.
Swalwell built a career lecturing the country about accountability and the rule of law. The FBI just showed up with a warrant to see if he meant any of it.
