Adiós, Eric Swalwell AKA Rep. Zipper Problem
Swalwell’s overdue demise is no news to subscribers of this newsletter
Sometimes, it’s the ones you most expect.
Eric Swalwell seemed to have it all. The 45-year-old California Democrat has been in Congress since 2013, representing the deep-Blue bastion of the San Francisco Bay Area, and until yesterday Swalwell was the favorite to win his party’s nomination for governor in this year’s race. Which, given California’s strong Democrat lean these days, meant that Swalwell stood a good shot of taking over in Sacramento and then using that post as launching-pad for national politics, even the presidency. Just as the current Gov. Gavin Newsom has done.
Like Newsom, Swalwell craves media attention. At times, he seemed to represent TV news greenrooms more than his Congressional district. Swalwell was never as smooth and polished as he believes himself to be, yet he compensated with fervor, evincing consistent partisan vitriol for Donald Trump and Republicans. That plays well among the liberal faithful and earned Swalwell national prominence.
The remarkable thing is that Swalwell got this far, given his personal habits. The married father of three was well known in political circles in California and our nation’s capital for having serious “zipper problems” as spooks put it. Hints of his recklessness came to light in a detailed 2020 report that the Congressman had been closely involved for three years starting in 2012 with Fang Fang AKA Christine Fang, a young Chinese woman who was known to the FBI to be a spy for Beijing. Fang was living in the United States to persuade rising American politicians to see things Beijing’s way and she employed sexual persuasion. Swalwell wasn’t her only target and FBI surveillance caught her having sex in a car with an unnamed Ohio mayor.
When this embarrassing scandal came to light, Swalwell insisted he’d done nothing wrong but he refused to discuss it either, claiming state secrecy, even though the statement “I never had sex with Fang Fang” would be wholly unclassified. The media played along, demurring from digging deeply into this mess. Longtime House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Swalwell’s protector, saw to it that her protégé survived. Pelosi even kept Swalwell on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he held the CIA account, a truly reckless move given his China spy scandal. There are many unanswered questions in this affair, given the reality that California Democrats, particularly in the San Francisco area, have a serious and longstanding problem with Chinese espionage and influence operations.
Swalwell’s clearly got something to hide in the Fang Fang scandal, considering his hysterical reaction recently to suggestions by Trump’s FBI that they might release the Swalwell-Fang file. Republicans finally removed Swalwell from the HPSCI in early 2023, to the relief of U.S. counterintelligence, so his current access to top American secrets is zero. Moreover, his decade-ago dalliance with a Chinese spy now looks like the least of Swalwell’s worries.
Yesterday, after weeks of mounting rumblings on social media, the San Francisco Chronicle published a bombshell report based on the account of a former Swalwell campaign staffer, nearly two decades the Congressman’s junior, who claims that he violently sexually assaulted her on two occasions, in 2019 and 2024. These are detailed claims on the record. Moreover, for years Swalwell loudly castigated Republicans facing similar allegations of sexual misconduct. Shortly thereafter, CNN reported that three more women had come forward with a similar tale of the horny yet married Congressman attempting to seduce them via social media, including sending unsolicited sexual images.
By that point, with Democrat-aligned media turned against him, the Swalwell campaign was in free-fall, indeed “imploding,” as even sympathetic outlets admitted. The California Democrat establishment has walked away from Swalwell, who’s now radioactive. Both the state’s U.S. Senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, have asked Swalwell to leave the governor’s race. Even Nancy Pelosi turned her back on her longtime protégé, signaling that it’s game-over for the Congressman. Top California Democrat institutions, including the powerful teacher’s union, joined the fray in condemning Swalwell.
The perennially combative Swalwell, a former prosecutor, responded to the implosion of his political career with a video in which he denied all wrongdoing, adamantly, while apologizing to his wife for unspecified misconduct, leading to the obvious question: If Swalwell’s done nothing wrong, what’s he apologizing to his wife for? This represents a last-ditch effort to save the remnants of his political career (and perhaps his marriage). Nevertheless, Swalwell’s dreams of taking over in Sacramento have evaporated as calls for him to resign from Congress in shame are mounting.
If the coordinated Democrat push to dump Swalwell, a full-spectrum op across media, looks anything but spontaneous, that’s because it’s not. Democrats have known for years about Swalwell’s notorious zipper problems and his rivals have been waiting for the right moment to pounce, compiling thick oppo files to dump, as they now have. If Swalwell doesn’t bow out of public life now, more and worse allegations against him are inbound. Still, many are acting surprised that Swalwell turns out to be a horrible human being.
You know who’s not surprised? Subscribers to Top Secret Umbra.
In January of this year, as part of my Intelligence Community Confidential series, I dropped an old-school blind-item about the Congressman. I decided not to name him publicly, given Swalwell’s litigiousness – like Donald Trump he makes everyone around him sign NDAs while pursuing legal action against anyone who dares to question him – but anybody awake had no trouble deciphering my plain hints:
Blind Item: Representative Zipper Problem
Hating Trump constitutes an effective business model in Washington, DC, too, not just Ottawa. It’s an easy path to fame and riches on the Left. Few Democrats have gotten more mileage out of amplifying Trump’s mistakes and outrages than this Congressman, who’s made a career out of outdoing fellow liberals in denouncing MAGA and Republicans in vitriolic terms, preferably on TV. This is a smart move in his deep-Blue state, and since 2016, he’s devoted more time and effort to shouting at Trump than doing his Congressional job. This hardly slowed his political advance, and he makes no secret of his desire to move higher in politics. However, there are obstacles. His personal finances have come under question. More serious are his personal problems. Sex, as such, is no big deal on Capitol Hill. Shagging is endemic, on all sides. Young staffers are accustomed to being treated as sex toys by too many Congressmembers. This sometimes involves illegalities and what this newsletter has politely referred to as “boy problems,” particularly among Republicans, but most of the action is just horny older men with power getting sex from young women. There’s nothing particularly controversial there, it’s nothing new on the Hill. That said, the married Representative Zipper Problem stands in a class by himself. He’s notorious for skirt-chasing on the job, and is known to flirt with any young-ish women who cross his path. He keeps doing this despite a messy sex scandal years ago which nearly tanked his political career. He was saved by powerful members of his own party, who had their own unpleasant secrets, but he’s learned no caution. Rep. Zipper Problem keeps sexting women not his wife, often unsolicited, including sending salacious pictures all over DC. I know more than one female in our nation’s capital who gave the Congressman her number, for work reasons, then got a bunch of naughty texts from him. He’s sent so many unsolicited d*ck pics around our nation’s capital that even I’ve seen one (a journalist friend was horrified since the Congressman was sexting her as his wife was in the hospital delivering Rep. Zipper Problem’s child). His political rivals know about this, as do multiple intelligence services. Subtle, this guy is not. It’s only a matter of time before his risqué extramarital habits come to light, endangering his political rise.
Who told ya? The only real mystery in this sordid case is why it took top Democrats so long to come out against a man who was severely compromised by his own habitual misconduct. How many foreign intelligence services, who watch Capitol Hill antics closely, knew about Swalwell’s ugly ways?