LEAPT OR THROWN?

A couple of months ago I was noticing how it looked like both Republican candidates in the California governor race seemed far more popular than any of the legion of Democrats they were up against. The leading Democrat candidate to this point was a fellow who made a previous presidential run: Eric Swalwell. Swalwell, a former prosecutor and current Congressman for California, since 2013, was endorsed by Adam Schiff, Hakeem Jefferies and 20 other members of congress as well as California’s fire fighters and teachers' union.

Swalwell announced his gubernatorial run on Jimmy Kimmel and came out asserting that the governor of California’s most important job should be to “keep Donald Trump and ICE out of our streets and out of our lives.” This isn’t a new stance for Swalwell, who positioned himself over the last decade as a fierce opponent of Donald Trump. In 2016 he held a position on the House Intelligence Committee and played a role in investigating links between Russia, Trump, and associates. Swalwell also served as a prosecutor during Trump's second impeachment trial and in 2021 filed a civil lawsuit against him, his son Donald Jr, and Rudy Giuliani, seeking damages for inciting the January 6th breach of the Capitol. Highlighting his party loyalty, by the start of the 118th Congress, 2023-25, Swalwell had voted in line with Joe Biden's stated position more than 99% of the time. And paired with all that Swalwell is perhaps best known for calling for a mandatory national ban and buyback of semiautomatic weapons. As such, it seems like Swalwell was easily the most prominent and best aligned Democrat for the state of California — and all the polling placed him at the top of that side of the race for governor.

AND THEN

On Thursday morning it was looking like there would be a push to encourage some of the eight other candidates, most with low single digit favourability, to step away and give the leading candidate, Swalwell, a real chance at a run against the leading Republicans, who had twice the popularity. But by the following evening Swalwell’s fundraising page was down, his campaign chair had resigned, and Adam Schiff, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi and everyone else were talking about the guy in the past tense and acting as if they’d never met the man.

What happened? Well, there’s the official story: Women came forward with allegations against Swalwell; and to these allegations the party acted swiftly and responsibly. Simple.

Okay, but even if you ignore the details, the timing, the accusers and allegations, all of that, and just look at similar situations the whole thing looks rather unprecedented and more like a politically defenestration. In another setting he would have "fallen" from a balcony or gone down in a "plane crash". Notice the contrast with what you have here with a long-time congressperson gone within hours on mere accusations and with an absence of evidence and what happened when Tara Reade and seven other women levelled accusations against Joe Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 election (in the wake of Me Too, not three decades ago or even with different folks calling the shots at the DNC.) Well, the entire Democratic apparatus circled the wagons, especially all the powerful women of the Democratic party, including Pelosi, Warren, Abrams, and Whitmer. They all spent months explaining that due process matters, how Joe's integrity was unimpeachable, how they were satisfied with his own assessment that he was innocent, and why everything they were just arguing for during Me Too was in reality non-serious and irresponsible, that life is more complicated than trite slogans such as “believe all women” and sometimes you have to put on your big person pants and deal with the world as it is. They even had a huge number of former staffers come together to formally declare the guy was a devoted family man who fights for gender equality, and not on any popular "creepy" lists... And how did the public respond? Did Democratic women dust off their pink touques so widely deployed just months earlier and once again take to the streets? A one hundred city, ten million person march for women’s rights? A national-wide female-led general strike against inappropriate behaviour in the workplace? A month-long action against powerful predators and gender-based violence? All of Hollywood and talk TV coming out to denounce the would-be president as unfit? No. None of the above, of course. Biden stayed in the race, won the nomination, and then the presidency. The allegations did not matter; and they mattered least of all to the Democratic party officials and those who would vote for them — all of whom were, so loudly and publicly, hyper-concerned about mere allegations, of even less veracity, against their political foes. That discrepancy is just one obvious red flag telling us that something is amiss here (and probably there, too).

MANUFACTURING AN ANONYMITY TSUAMI AND AGENCY FAMINE

So what are the allegations, who’s making them, and when did they come forward?

First published in the San Francisco Chronicle, a former staffer (an adult, which needs stipulating these days, who was anonymized by default by the publication), explained that she and Swalwell consensually sent and received increasingly provocative messages to one another via Snapchat — the app with the ghost logo that uses end-to-end encryption and allows users to send messages that self-erase after a short time, effectively “the dick pic app.” In a later interview with CNN, it is explained that Swalwell “asked [the staffer] to send him photos of herself, including nude photos, which she did. She said she found the attention flattering, but also felt nervous because he was her boss.” What she doesn’t do is describe feeling any inhibitions about sending or receiving nude photos to and from a married man or just one twenty years older than her (or that all the popular films, television dramas, and podcast series depicting similar behaviour results in the woman’s swift and brutal murder…) But it's not just her, elsewhere we are told the woman's parents were aware she was Snapchatting with the congressman. Apparently this is normal behaviour. Curious. But, whatever.

Actually, the whole reason I’m writing about this is because in the reporting immediately following the Chronicle article, from CNN, tells us Swalwell showed close interest in young women, helping them find their footing professionally, “making them feel special and even starstruck.” Doesn't that land weird with you? I think this tells you all you need to know about what's happening. As far as I’m aware, unless Palmer Luckey just deployed a new covert weapon, you cannot (yet) make another person feel starstruck toward yourself. Right? Right. That is entirely, perfectly, exactly up to the person and probably more of a subconscious emotion even the person may not be able to control. You may wish to go and talk to Meryl Streep, for instance, but then find yourself flustered or flat-out stupefied and trembling, unable to speak. Meryl didn’t do that to you! You are most certainly not the unwitting victim of her devious powers of manipulation and she definitely doesn't owe anything (not an apology never mind $15 million in damages.) And yet all four authors at CNN, a whole team of investigative reporters, who gifted us this follow-up article are so eager to collectively strip any agency of any kind from adults, working professionals making big person decisions, that women are not even permitted to have their own emotions; those, we are told, must be imposed, inserted if you will, into passive, receptive, non-acting, unconscious souls by a man. Could our whole modern women's empowerment narrative be more infantilizing and disempowering? Makes you wonder why they didn’t also interview Laura Mulvey about these newly evolved male superpowers or just hear from Camile Paglia or any of her copious critics? Why not at least have something to say in the absence of evidence or corroboration? Or why not wait for a real investigation, charges, or the outcome of a trial, you know, so as not to further degrade the legal system and all of media along with it?

The Chronicle goes on to say Swalwell “tried to kiss her” in her car after a donor meeting. I don’t know what that means. After flirting for some time in person and in text, which escalated to the pair voluntarily sending and receiving evermore suggestive and eventually sexually revealing photos and messages, did he “try” to kiss you and you told him “no” and/or pushed him away? Or was he reaching for his phone and you read that as attempted rape? Somewhere in the middle? None of the above? What are we talking about and why is this pertinent information? It’s supposed to suggest something, only without providing details or evidence it happened? What was the crime?

As the reporters tell it (not in quotes and so seemingly not in her words), weeks after this encounter, and alone in her car once again, Swalwell “pulled out his penis in the car and asked her to perform oral sex…” The reporting does not imply that this was unexpected or unwanted in any way and says the staffer consented. She doesn't suggest there was anything even approximating physical coercion. His mind-control powers instantly upgraded from failed peck on the cheek to blowjob in what was seemingly their next notable interaction. In future interviews the story transforms, as it must, from his asking and her consenting to him “instructing” her to do so and her unwitting compliance. How could anyone, especially a woman, say no to their boss or, really, any man? That's my takeaway.

The timeline is unclear in this and other reporting but they go on to describe how at a later date the two went out for drinks and then had sex. In case you don’t know, in 2026 there being any drugs or alcohol consumed at any time prior to sex makes this considered rape, by definition, according to countless people (especially anyone within a hundred miles of a university) — but not by her of him, of course, despite them both being consenting adults with a history of consensual sexualized behaviour and contact and this encounter and the drinking being entirely voluntary. (“Why aren’t kids drinking or having sex anymore?”) So, though perhaps perfectly subtle to some, she’s formally accusing him of sexual assault and have him labelled a sexual predator for the rest of his life with this alone.

The reporting then states that “Five years later, the woman said, she attended an April 2024 charity gala where Swalwell was honored.” Swalwell's now-former staffer said she took in the event, then went out for drinks with others in attendance, and eventually, once she’d had a few, she invited Swalwell to meet up for more drinks. Together they drank and drank, with her eventually becoming so inebriated that she cannot remember the rest of the night, except, of course, “pushing Swalwell away and telling him, ‘No,’ while he allegedly forced himself on her.” We don’t notice or care, of course, whether it was her who was ordering or paying for the drinks, or whether he was the one more inebriated and less conscious than her. We wouldn’t even ask such questions. And it wouldn’t actually matter. Obviously. She's not claiming she was drugged or that he somehow physically coerced her to go to his hotel room. His evil trickster nature and devilish powers of mind control that did the real work here. She wanted no part of any of this. It's irrelevant that, by her account, she pursued him, voluntarily kept drinking all night long, especially once in his presence and in full awareness of their history, until effectively unconscious, so unconscious that she would not have otherwise willingly been there or gone to a hotel room with him (but not so unconscious to verbally object and push back once there and he attempted to conclude what she initiated, facilitated, and what everyone understood they met up and were there to do.) Okay.

The reporting explains how the staffer told her boyfriend about the event (in which she had late-night drinks with her former lover and drank herself into unconsciousness) the following day and that he told her to report the incident to police but — in the immediate aftermath of the Me Too moment and in the middle of the Epstein hysteria, with anonymous adult “victims” (with entirely untested accounts) receiving $5 million payouts, book deals, and instant celebrity status as well as camaraderie with a global cohort of “survivors” (as if we are supposed to equate this person with someone who was alone among their family, friends, and community in avoiding being packed into furnaces after first being kicked out of their homes, stripped of all their possessions and their dignity, transported like cattle across the continent, forced into labour camps, starved, and then their near-skeletons gassed…) — she decided not go to the authorities because she felt she -wait for it- “was an equal party in it” but, she wants you to know, also afraid no one would believe her.

So why would the media report that, especially after demonstrating how untrue it is? Didn’t she take her evidence-free allegations (mostly of her eager sexual and sexualized correspondences and encounters with a married congressperson) to a salivating press and then everyone not only instantly believed her version of events but also acted strongly in response, long prior to any investigation, charges, or a civil or criminal trial? She came out with this information years after the alleged events precisely because she was entirely confident that (regardless of time, distance, or changes to her story) she would get no push-back of any sort and be believed instantly, permanently, and to the maximum of their ability by everyone who matters, just as the culture currently demands (regardless of whether she wanted the attention and interactions, sought them out on her own initiative, reported enjoying all of that, and even returned after no longer working with the man to maintain the relationship and use him for future references, work, and then go for drinks, knowing exactly where that led them in the past.)

So then what explains coming out now? Why wait years to reveal this and why at this moment and to do so without any evidence? If she was wanting to take him down for criminal activity or just bring something serious forward could she not have, at any point past or present, effortlessly sent him a solicitation to, at minimum, document for the world all his terrible behaviour? Yes. Effortlessly. Presuming the aim was justice and not political execution or childish backstabbing, why would she do none of that and also transmute each telling into something that sounds worse (which will, even in the hands of an incompetent lawyer, almost certainly hamper or sink any civil or criminal case against the man)? Is any of it explicable on the terms presented?

MORE ALLEGATIONS

But don’t worry, within hours of the first allegations against Swalwell another woman, Ally Sammarco, a Democratic strategist and podcast host, went on the record with CNN and The New York Times. Sammarco alleged that years ago Swalwell also sent her unsolicited inappropriate messages via Snapchat. This, too, came after she initiated contact with him on Twitter, corresponded with him via text for some time (at all hours of day and night), and eventually met with him in person at his office in DC. As you would expect, what we don't get to see are any inappropriate messages, let alone any messages that aren't fully decontextualized and we most definitely do not get all her correspondences with him, exactly as you would do by default if you were a serious person making serious allegations or doing real reporting.

Just imagine for a second a scenario in which you work in DC and get unsolicited nudes from AOC or Nancy Pelosi (maybe after chatting about policy or fundraising over email one time) and what unfolds is something other than the following:

• *Screenshots*

• Message: “Sorry, I believe you sent me this in error.”

• Another screenshot of the sent message, documenting the date, time, and series of events

How could anything else transpire? And then would you not immediately go to the press with your instant, instinctual screen captures if something other than the following transpired:

• An immediate admission of error

• Profuse apology

• Slightly too aggressive request that the screenshot be deleted

• Plea that you not spread news of the sincere mistake (and maybe offers of money or at least a request from a lawyer to sign an NDA)

Is it even possible for something else to happen? And even with that you may still wish to tell someone higher up about the situation because clearly this person shouldn’t be handling sensitive information and certainly shouldn't have access to the nuclear codes… Is there any timeline in which you, a tech savvy Millennial of Gen Z-er who spends all their time on the internet and in the press, do not take any screenshots (of anything inappropriate in the least), make no mention of the event through any medium even anonymously or with the sender’s name omitted, and instead sit on the information waiting to see if you can weaponize your searing absence of evidence against the person years from now, maybe when they’re nominated for the Nobel Prize or Congressional Medal of Honor?

I mean, if you cut someone off in traffic or fall off your skateboard hasn’t the whole neighbourhood captured it on their GoPro and their phone and a doorbell cam or two and those have been posted to Youtube or turned it into an Instagram post before you’ve even realized what’s happened? And aren’t there millions of people who would enthusiastically seek out and share evidence of their state representative jaywalking or littering? It’s hard to imagine there aren’t. But you’re getting so many casual crotch-shots from so many supreme court judges, district attorneys, senators, congresspersons, governors, mayors, and chiefs of police and are so unphased by them that you don’t realize you’re enabling these sexual predators and ensuring others will be gifted with the same or worse? What else are you not reporting? “Oh yeah, I forgot, Clinton drugged me back in ‘96. My boyfriend knows, of course, but I’m still too worried to come forward because who would ever believe li’l ol’ me? I don’t want to be universally anonymized in the press and in court, sue for $20M in damages, get a $600k advance on a $3M book deal ghostwritten by a celebrity author… I’m just a quiet podcaster and political activist who likes her boring life [in the media in DC].” Well, it must be asked, would you also fail to collect evidence or come forward with it if you knew of other elected officials engaged in animal or child abuse? Why? And why shouldn’t you be charged?

Regardless, on these accusations alone, Swalwell — who may be a truly terrible person, a serial rapist or a mass murderer for all I know — was immediately and enthusiastically (before sundown) group-defenestrated by anyone and everyone who ever made contact with him, who were all in unanimous agreement on what happened and what the result should be. He soon quit the campaign and then also stepped down from congress.

But then another accuser arrived. This one alleged that, after she underwent “EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy” from the “EMDR Institute” to “recover repressed memories” (using a technique the institute itself says on its website induces “changes in memories” and the exact sort of thing that gave us the Satanic Panic and has been so resoundingly debunked by all serious mental health professionals.) Her lawyer, Lisa Bloom (who was part of the 2016 "Katie Johnson" pedophilia hoax concocted by a Jerry Springer Show producer, and who appears to chase these sorts of cases, having represented the ex-girlfriends of Eddie Murphy, Charlie Sheen, Shaquille O’Neil, Tiger Woods, and others and wins them half a million dollars for surfacing past abuse through fraudulent therapy sessions) told reporters her client, a Hollywood model, underwent this therapy to extract memories of Swalwell drugging and assaulting her. Wild.

Bloom came on the scene alongside other stories from Cheyenne Hunt, "the social media influencer ['lawyer, organizer & activist'] who helped amplify an early allegation against Congressman Swalwell”, who went to the press telling us 30 women have since told her they too were also harassed or abused. (They didn’t go to the police, prior or since, haven’t named themselves, and also mysteriously waited until today to out someone they insist is a known sexual predator...) But I guess we'll have to wait for any screenshots or videos or evidence of any kind to come out. Best to bury the guy first, and on every news, interest, and gossip show in the country, and then scrounge for evidence. [In the meantime, Hunt (this CNN contributor, Democratic activist, and lawyer) and her team at the non-profit Gen-Z For Change are busy building a website to give Charlie Kirk "the memorial he deserves". Amazing.]

OTHER CASES

For some, apparently, the existence of an accusation is sufficient evidence in itself. The presentation of additional accusers, then, is only orders of magnitude more evidence of the worst possible reading of the worst possible wrongdoing. But how many high-profile sexual abuse cases are you aware of (that you never sought out or even wished to know anything about but that found you) as so much of the world’s press jumped in to try the case themselves — without evidence, devoid of any balance or process of any kind, and blindly on the side of the accuser — prior to any investigation or there being enough suspicion for the case to go to court or anyone reaching a settlement? If you’re anything like me, that’s probably all such cases. And, given that, how often did you feel the conclusion to the case was foregone as a result and so you never heard about it again or went back to look into the results? Probably every one of those cases. How many cases did you later learn were thrown out of court on lack of evidence, proven false during trial or by the would-be victim’s own admission, later overturned with the aid of a civil rights organization or through supreme court review, or where the accuser was, in fact, subsequently indicted or convicted of fraud and extortion? Few to none I would suspect. If you came across even one such case, was the not-guilty result or fraud indictment anywhere near as prominent or widely disseminated as a baseless, or at least indefensible, accusation? And was the accused made whole afterward?

Do you know, for instance, that the jury in the first Bill Cosby trial could not come to a verdict because the one person able to bring a case (of the myriad victims, nearly 80, presented by the press as serious and credible) did so so very long after the events, brought so little evidence, and showed they continued to voluntarily stay in friendly communication and contact with the accused? Did you learn that he was only convicted and did years in prison (including being deemed a sexually violent predator who poses a danger to women and ordered that he be on a lifetime sex offender registry and check in monthly with authorities) after a Me Too retrial? And did you learn that this later conviction and predator status were overturned by the supreme court with no contest after it was demonstrated that prosecutors acted inappropriately and violated the blind, 83-year-old’s most basic constitutional rights? Yeah, somehow I missed all that, too.

Or what about Kevin Spacey? You certainly heard that he was accused of sexual offenses. The press would have had you believe the actor spent his life as a convicted child predator. Were you aware that all four of his accusers, all men, failed to prove their cases in front of a criminal trial jury in the UK and again in front of two federal civil juries in the UK and US? Did you know Spacey’s one accuser was made to pay his legal costs (for having failed to demonstrate the event even took place or that it would have met the legal threshold for liability, with several claims dismissed by the judge prior to trial [in actual court, not in the media of course]) and the others settled out of court, with Spacey acquitted of all nine sex-offense charges only after a decade of legal battles on two continents? I didn’t even know the allegation that started it all (which may or may not have happened) was said to have occurred in 1986 and the crime amounted to what was said to be a “sexual advance.” What is said to have happened was the accuser, a fellow actor, was invited to a party at Spacey’s apartment and at some point he decided to retreat to a bedroom and lie on the bed. After everyone else left the accuser remained, awake and on the bed, and a drunken Spacey found him there and “attempted to seduce him” — but the accuser turned Spacey down and then left without issue — an event the “survivor” (now in his mid-50s) described to the press and later a jury as the "most traumatic single event" of his life for which he was seeking $40M in damages.

How about the Me Too non-trial of Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer? On its face, on the front pages of newspapers around the country, it looked like the clearest possible case of violent sexual abuse, and eventually multiple cases. The victim was granted a domestic violence restraining order, alleging Bauer committed physical and sexual assault (sodomizing her, punching her in the face, and choking her to the point of unconsciousness.) Paired with that, the accuser had gone to an emergency room with injuries and met with multiple police detectives to give statements. So much evidence. On just these allegations, not charges, Bauer was immediately suspended without pay by Major League Baseball for two seasons — at his prime and immediately after having won the Cy Young award and signing a contract for $102 million. This would be the end of Bauer’s baseball career. Soon, another woman came forward claiming a violent sexual assault and that she was pregnant with Bauer’s child, seeking $1.6 million dollars, at minimum, in exchange for having an abortion. Only years later, in 2024, was the woman claiming she was pregnant indicted on felony charges of fraud and extortion. During the preliminary investigation in the first case Bauer was able to provide a video of the accuser smiling next to him in bed while he was still asleep the morning after the alleged abuse but magically absent any of the wounds she took to hospital and told investigators he inflicted on her the night before. In their months of investigation, the LA County DA’s office verified repeated messages from the accuser seeking evermore rough sex with Bauer after each encounter and also a group chat between the woman and her friends plotting their "Next victim. Star pitcher for the Dodgers." "What should I steal?" she asked in anticipation of visiting Bauer's home. "Take his money" was the popular reply. And her response? "I already have my hooks in. you know how I roll." "Net worth is 51 mil" she explains. "Need daddy to choke me out," she tells her co-conspirators, if she's going to "secure the bag." Eventually a judge determined this accuser was "materially misleading" in her accounts and Bauer awarded $310,000 in a default judgement after the accuser publicly made demonstrably false accusations that he had paid her off to silence her. This award was the sum total of her punishment for ending this man’s career, likely taking away hundreds of million dollars from him, and continually making false accusations to try and further ruin him years later… All I heard about this situation was that the most promising player in the game was beating women, that this was said to be indicative of a broader culture of violence, and that Bauer got the longest suspension in professional sports before being dropped from the league altogether. It’s not interesting to anyone, least of all media companies, that fraudulent accusations are disseminated by all the world’s press at a speed and spread that puts the worst wildfires to shame, but any evidence or findings requires people to do work to seek them out? And it's just as uninteresting that there's no life-long predator list or monthly reporting requirement for the ladies engaged in this sort of thing?

There are, of course, many more of these cases, just the most high-profile, than I am willing to review or spell out here but it seems to be a huge percentage of the cases I’m aware of. Yes, Harvey Weinstein seems to have been a monster (and was convicted in 2022 of sexual assault of one person and for that got sentenced to 16 years in jail, exceeding the maximum for a voluntary manslaughter conviction in the US) and Louis CK a perv, who masturbated in front of someone (and requested to do so at other points, but declined after his would-be viewers turned down the offer, oh and may or may not have done so over the phone on one occasion...)

Sure, Swalwell seems like a terrible person and a dope, one enthusiastically seeking total professional and personal self-immolation while leaping from a tremendous height while at the top of his game. I just hope that’s the case and there's any truth to be found in the allegations, that this isn't a party-induced, media- and social media-propelled execution. And, really, what could be more depressing?