The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Christine Blasey Ford Standard and the Sudden Destruction of Eric Swalwell

Posted on | April 11, 2026 | No Comments

Far be it from me to defend Eric Swalwell, now accused of rape and other “inappropriate” behavior by at least four women. If CNN is willing to vouch for the credibility of Swalwell’s accusers, then certainly I will not cast doubt on their veracity. However, I have never supported Swalwell, and have not voted for any Democrat for more than three decades, so my hands are clean — I bear no responsibility for Swalwell’s wrongdoing, and can applaud his destruction with a clear conscience. The same cannot be said, however, by CNN and other Democrat-friendly media venues which have spent years giving Eric Swalwell a platform without ever even hinting about his lecherous habits, which were apparently an open secret among Democratic Party operatives on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

Has everyone forgotten Christine Blasey Ford? Her name came up in my column last month about the Duke lacrosse rape hoax:

The institutions of media and academia that had disgraced themselves in the Duke lacrosse rape hoax did not even seem to learn a lesson from their blunders. In 2014, another rape hoax was perpetrated at the University of Virginia, with an emotionally unbalanced young woman claiming that she had been brutally attacked at a fraternity house, a crime she blamed on an imaginary frat member she called “Haven Monahan.” The university immediately suspended fraternity activities on campus, as feminists proclaimed that the story in Rolling Stone magazine proved the existence of a rape epidemic among college students nationwide. Rolling Stone was found guilty of defamation, and the mysterious “Haven Monahan” was never found.
How many hoaxes has the news media helped promote since then? Somewhere there may be a full list, but certainly the “Russian collusion” hoax during Trump’s first term stands out in memory, and then there was the Christine Blasey Ford claim of a long-ago gang rape during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. The lack of accountability — nobody yet has gone to prison for their role in the “Russian collusion” hoax, and most in the media won’t even admit that Kavanaugh was the victim of an outrageous lie — is what frustrates so many people who’ve grown tired of such shenanigans, which have an obvious political agenda.

Someone needs to speak to Mark Judge, who was collateral damage in the Kavanaugh affair, about this lack of media accountability. For myself, I consider Christine Blasey Ford to be a heinous liar, and have the same opinion of E. Jean Carroll. When all else fails, it seems, Democrats are always able to find some woman willing to make accusations of sexual wrongdoing by Republicans, and I’m sure Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will testify that this is a long-established pattern.

Never forget what they did to Clarence Thomas

It is the political double standard in such matters that is objectionable, particularly in regard to the allegedly “objective” news media. Now that it is permissible to speak the truth about Eric Swalwell, the question everyone should be asking is, “Why now?” The accusations against Swalwell involve events that are not entirely recent:

On April 10, 2026, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story where a former Swalwell staffer claimed that Swalwell, 17 years her senior, had sexually assaulted her on more than one occasion, including when she was too intoxicated to give consent. A few hours later, CNN published a story in which four women alleged sexual misconduct by Swalwell, including a former staffer who said he raped her. Politico also reported that a former Swalwell employee signed a non-disclosure agreement pertaining to employment discrimination when they left his office. Although the agreement was not related to sexual harassment, it directly contradicted Swalwell’s previous claims that no one on his staff signed an NDA.
Swalwell described the allegations as “lies” and claimed that they were intended to damage his campaign for governor. The Los Angeles Times reported that Swalwell’s attorney had sent a cease and desist letter to the staffer and threatened to sue for defamation.
Multiple high-level staffers resigned from Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign in advance of the report, including U.S. Representative and campaign chair Jimmy Gomez. Others, including the California Teachers Association, former state assemblymember Ian Calderon, and U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego rescinded their endorsements of Swalwell.

This happened very suddenly on a Friday, you see, even though the allegations involve incidents that happened as far back as 2019:

A former staffer of Rep. Eric Swalwell, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, says that the congressman raped her when she was heavily intoxicated and left her bruised and bleeding, an allegation Swalwell strongly denies.
“I was pushing him off of me, saying no,” the woman told CNN of the incident, which she said happened in 2024 after she had stopped working in Swalwell’s office. “He didn’t stop.”
She said it was the second time Swalwell had nonconsensual sexual contact with her while she was drunk. In 2019, when she was still working for him, she said she woke up naked with him in a hotel room after a night of heavy drinking. She said she had no memory of what happened but could feel physically that they’d had sexual contact.

Keep in mind that Swalwell literally ran for president, campaigning for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination for several months in 2019 before dropping out, and yet this staffer didn’t speak out against him at the time. Allegedly, they continued to socialize for years after the 2019 rape, so that he could rape her again in 2024, but still she did not denounce him, until two months ahead of the California primary in which Swalwell was the leading Democratic candidate. The timing is rather curious.

You can see from the Real Clear Politics poll average that, in California’s open “jungle primary,” Swalwell was positioned to be the only Democrat to qualify for the general election, ahead of billionaire Tom Steyer and Rep. Katie Porter. These three Democrats were splitting the Democratic vote in such a way that, not only was Republican Steve Hilton the leading candidate in the race, but there was a serious chance that Republican Chad Bianco might finish second in the primary, meaning that there would be zero Democrats on the ballot come November.

Yet it seems Swalwell’s habits were an “open secret” in D.C.:

Swalwell was crowned the “Snapchat king of Congress” in 2016 over his enthusiasm for the app, which was then popular among teens and young millennials.
Social media creator [Ally] Sammarco claimed she messaged Swalwell on Twitter in 2021 asking about his history growing up in a Republican family.
She claimed he began sending her provocative late-night messages, referring to her as a “bad angel,” and eventually switched their communications to Snapchat where he allegedly shared photos of his penis.
He allegedly “ran by her apartment building several times,” giving her hugs but not coming inside.

That was five years ago, and Swalwell has twice been reelected to Congress since then, but for some reason Ms. Sammarco decided to say nothing about a congressman sending her obscene images until now?

“Oh, it’s nothing — a congressman who is on TV multiple times every week sent me a dick pic but I won’t say anything about it.”

As I say, however, it is not my intent to defend Swalwell, nor to cast aspersions on the numerous victims of his egregious behavior. It’s just that there seems to have been a cover-up, an agreement among everyone who was aware of Swalwell’s pattern of predatory behavior, that nothing would be said publicly about it, until this week. Are we supposed to believe that, among the cable news anchors who interviewed Swalwell over the past several years, none of them ever heard any rumors about his sexual misconduct? Excuse me for being suspicious about this.

The Christine Blasey Ford Standard, as I’ll call it, is that whenever a woman accuses a man of sexual wrongdoing, his guilt is certain, because no woman would ever lie about such things. Her accusation is the only evidence necessary to convict him in the court of public opinion. Thus let it be with Eric Swalwell — “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” — but I’m still curious about why the media kept silent for so long, until this week.

 



 

Category: California, Democrats, Media Bias, Scandal, Sex, Violence Against Women

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