FBI agents surrounded former Rep. Eric Swalwell at San Francisco International Airport, seized his electronics under a federal search warrant, and searched his D.C. home the next day, a sharp escalation in the sexual misconduct investigation that already ended his political career.
Swalwell stepped off a plane at SFO on the evening of August 15 and walked straight into a group of waiting federal agents. Dressed in a hat, black sweatshirt, and sneakers, dragging a rollbag and wearing a backpack, the former seven-term California congressman spoke with the agents at his gate before they escorted him through the terminal, up an escalator, and into a room behind a door marked "restricted area." By approximately 8:25 p.m., agents had served him with a search warrant and walked out with his white Apple iPhone, its charging cable and wall adapter, and an Apple MacBook Pro.
Surveillance footage of the encounter, exclusively obtained by The California Post, shows Swalwell appearing calm and cooperative throughout. He was not arrested. Agents left him with a copy of the warrant and an inventory of the property they took. He was reportedly allowed to leave afterward.
The warrant cited a federal civil-rights statute, one that can be used to prosecute public officials who abuse their government power. That detail points federal investigators toward a specific theory: that Swalwell may have used his official position to silence women who accused him of sexual misconduct.
The airport seizure was only the first move. The following day, FBI agents executed additional search warrants at Swalwell's Washington, D.C., residence and seized additional materials, a source previously told The Post. The back-to-back searches across two coasts in less than 24 hours mark a significant escalation in a federal criminal investigation that the Department of Justice opened in April.
The FBI declined to comment on the searches.
Swalwell has denied wrongdoing. Neither he nor his representatives responded to requests for comment on the airport encounter.
The federal probe follows a cascade of allegations from multiple women. At least four have gone public. One former staffer accused Swalwell of raping her when she was too intoxicated to consent, an allegation first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. A second woman accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 2018. Two additional women alleged he sent them unsolicited images of his genitals.
Fox News reported that at least five women, including one former staffer, have accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct or rape. Two women who have publicly discussed their allegations told CNN they had also spoken with the FBI, the Washington Examiner noted.
Rather than address the accusations head-on, Swalwell's lawyer sent a threatening letter to individuals accusing the former congressman of "nonconsensual sexual encounters," warning that Swalwell could sue them for defamation. That letter, an attempt to use legal intimidation against accusers while a sitting congressman, fits squarely within the kind of conduct the civil-rights statute in the warrant was designed to reach.
Swalwell resigned from Congress on April 14. At the time, the House Ethics Committee had been preparing its own investigation into alleged misconduct and sexual assault involving an employee under his supervision. He also faced a separate state ethics investigation. His campaign for California governor collapsed alongside his congressional career.
At the time of his resignation, Swalwell acknowledged some personal failings while disputing the most serious charges. Fox News reported his statement:
"I will fight the serious false allegations made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make."
That carefully split message, conceding "mistakes" while labeling the graver accusations false, left open the question of which allegations Swalwell considers fabricated and which he admits to. The FBI's decision to seize his personal electronics months later suggests federal investigators found the denial unconvincing, or at least insufficient to close the case.
The misconduct probe is not the only shadow over Swalwell's record. The White House declassified 97 pages of FBI records related to his past association with Christine Fang, a suspected Chinese intelligence operative known as "Fang Fang." Declassified files revealed that Swalwell told the FBI he had "occasionally hooked up" with Fang. Newsmax reported the newly released records came from the White House Transparency Task Force.
Swalwell once sat on the House Intelligence Committee, a position that gave him access to some of the nation's most sensitive classified material. His admitted sexual relationship with a woman U.S. intelligence officials suspected of operating on behalf of Beijing raised serious counterintelligence concerns at the time. The declassification of those records, arriving alongside the sexual misconduct investigation, compounds the picture of a congressman whose personal conduct repeatedly intersected with his public duties in ways that invited federal scrutiny.
Before entering Congress, Swalwell worked as a prosecutor and served in local government. He represented California for seven terms. He briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. None of that insulated him from the moment captured on airport surveillance footage: a former congressman standing at a gate, surrounded by FBI agents, watching them bag his phone and laptop as evidence in a federal criminal investigation.
The investigation remains open. No charges have been filed. But the scope of the federal action, search warrants executed on two coasts within a day, electronics seized, a civil-rights statute invoked, signals that the Justice Department is treating the allegations against Swalwell with the seriousness that his former colleagues in Congress apparently did not.
Several key questions remain unanswered. What specific evidence did investigators present to a judge to obtain the warrants? What was recovered from Swalwell's D.C. home? Which court authorized the searches? And how far does the investigation extend beyond the known accusers? The FBI's silence and Swalwell's non-response leave those gaps wide open.
For years, Swalwell positioned himself as a champion of accountability, for political opponents, for institutions he deemed corrupt, for anyone on the other side of the aisle. Now the machinery of accountability has turned toward him, and the former prosecutor finds himself on the receiving end of a search warrant. The facts will go where they go. But the era of Swalwell lecturing the country about integrity is over.
