Well, well, well. If it isn’t the consequences of our own actions finally knocking on Eric Swalwell’s door with a federal subpoena in one hand and a thick stack of unsealed NDAs in the other.
For those of you who remember — and by “those of you” we mean “anyone with a functioning memory longer than a goldfish” — this is the same Eric Swalwell who spent four years on national television telling us that Donald Trump was a Russian asset, while simultaneously sharing a bed, a bank account, and possibly a password manager with a woman named Fang Fang who turned out to be a literal Chinese intelligence officer. Not an allegation. Not a rumor. The FBI sat him down and told him in person. He still got to stay on the House Intelligence Committee until Kevin McCarthy finally pried him off of it like a barnacle.
Now the chief federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. wants to sit down with the women who say Swalwell did things to them that money was paid to keep quiet about. And that prosecutor wants to pierce the settlement agreements — the NDAs, the non-disclosures, the little legal muzzles that Democrat golden boys wrap around their victims like party favors — and find out what’s actually been buried under them.
The NDAs, in other words, are about to become readable.
Let’s review the tape, because it never stops being unbelievable.
Eric Swalwell, a sitting United States Congressman with access to classified intelligence briefings about China, was targeted by a Chinese intelligence operative who befriended him, attended his political events, helped place an intern in his office, and by most accounts, did a lot more than attend events. When the FBI figured out who she was, they didn’t arrest her. They couldn’t. She got on a plane back to Beijing before anyone could slap cuffs on her, and Swalwell got a “defensive briefing,” which is government-speak for “we’re telling you your girlfriend is a spy, please stop talking to her.”
And what did Swalwell do with this humiliating, career-ending, nation-compromising scandal?
He went on MSNBC and accused Trump of being compromised by a foreign power.
You cannot make this up. The man who slept next to a Chinese agent spent four years pointing his finger at the other guy and yelling “RUSSIA.” Every time he opened his mouth on cable news, the irony meter melted a little further into the studio floor, and every single anchor nodded along like none of them had read a newspaper in their life.
Here’s what changed. For years, Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, and Nancy Pelosi was also the one woman in Washington who could make an entire scandal disappear with a hand wave and a frozen facial expression. Swalwell was her guy. Willie Brown — her old political patron from San Francisco — went on TV last month and called her a liar to her face about exactly this, which tells you something about how protected Swalwell was.
That umbrella is gone. Pelosi isn’t Speaker. She isn’t anything. And the chief federal prosecutor for D.C. — who, it turns out, does not need Nancy Pelosi’s permission to do his job — has decided that the statute of limitations is not going to save Eric Swalwell from the women he allegedly hurt.
The move to pierce the settlements is the part that should have every Democrat in Washington reaching for the antacid. Because settlements don’t just exist in isolation. Settlements get paid out of campaign funds, or leadership PAC funds, or in some cases from a conveniently available rich donor who writes a check and gets nothing in return but a warm feeling and a future favor. Follow the money on one NDA and you might find yourself standing on the edge of ten more.
You know who’s not sleeping well tonight? Every single Democrat who signed off on those settlement payments. Every staffer who drafted the NDAs. Every political fixer who made the phone call to the accuser and said, “Here’s a number, here’s a non-disclosure, never speak his name again.”
Because when a federal prosecutor pierces an NDA, that’s not a press release. That’s a domino falling. And the next domino is named discovery, and the one after that is named deposition, and the one after that is named indictment.
Swalwell already resigned from Congress — he ran the second a fourth accuser came forward. He thought quitting was going to be the end of it. He thought the NDAs would hold. He thought the media would do what the media always does, which is yawn and change the subject to whatever new Trump tweet is available.
Wrong on all three.
We’ve been told for ten years that the people who wag their fingers the hardest at us — the ones who call us a threat to democracy, the ones who lecture us about Russian collusion, the ones who demand our guns and our voices and our vote — are morally superior human beings who deserve to run our lives.
Eric Swalwell is what those people actually look like when the lights come on.
He compromised national security with a Chinese agent. He paid off women with legal muzzles. He spent four years accusing his political enemies of the exact sins he was actively committing. And now, finally, after a decade of skating, a federal prosecutor with no political debt to Nancy Pelosi is about to open the envelope.
Grab your popcorn. The NDAs are about to become readable. And we are going to read every single word.