Look up "corrupt politician" in a dictionary, and you'll likely find the definition accompanied by a picture of the disgraced former California Democrat Congressman Eric Swalwell. The FBI has been digging into Swalwell's doings for some time; this is the same Eric Swalwell, mind you, who notoriously fell for the oldest trick in the intelligence-gathering book, the honey trap.
In the latest development, the FBI, on Tuesday morning, raided a Beverly Hills mansion connected to the former Congressman. Curiouser and curiouser.
Federal authorities raided a California mansion related to an investigation into disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., on Tuesday morning, Fox News has learned.
Swalwell resigned from Congress and withdrew from the California gubernatorial race earlier this year after facing multiple accusations of sexual misconduct. The FBI's raid targeted a mansion in Beverly Hills.
In August, the FBI searched Swalwell's D.C. home and seized his electronic devices at San Francisco International Airport during an operation. The operation was related to a probe into sexual misconduct, according to sources familiar with the incident. He was not arrested or detained.
As of this writing, it's not known who owns the mansion in question.
The one great thing about all this is that the investigation has already scuppered Swalwell's gubernatorial ambitions; had he received the nomination, California's politics being what they are, he may very well have been elected to replace the impeccably coiffed Governor Newsom. California has, at least, been spared that.
This isn't the only update this week on the Swalwell affair.
Swalwell also faced renewed scrutiny earlier this week after the White House declassified documents related to an FBI probe into his relationship with Christine "Fang Fang" Fang, a suspected Chinese intelligence operative. Swalwell told FBI agents he had "physical relations" with Fang on a handful of occasions, according to declassified FBI records released Monday by the White House.
Their last sexual encounter occurred in March 2015, according to Swalwell’s account in the FBI records.
This isn't the first time that the FBI has taken overt action in this investigation. In September, FBI agents swarmed Swalwell at the San Francisco International Airport, seizing some of his personal electronic devices, while in August, the FBI seized other devices in Swalwell's D.C. residence, all in concordance with a duly issued search warrant.
This seems a lot of trouble for a disgraced former Congressman. And it says a lot about California's 14th Congressional District, a Bay Area district, as well as his previous 15th Congressional District, that they would repeatedly send to Congress a man whose greatest intellectual achievement seems to be remembering where he stuck his finger last.
To call Eric Swalwell "disgraced" is something of an understatement. For a man who gives every appearance of having the intellectual capacity of a hard-boiled egg, he managed to nevertheless get himself involved with a known Chinese spy, and to be an actual contender in the California governor's race, until more and more information about his various activities started to come to light. He has also, mind, been accused of sexual misconduct by at least five women, one of whom was a former congressional aide. All that is over now, and that's a good thing; the man simply has no future in politics. And he may well be in deeper trouble than just that.
We don't know yet where all this will go. But it would be interesting indeed to see this small man take a large fall.