Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called on Rep. Eric Swalwell to end his campaign for California governor after four women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, including one former staffer who accused the congressman of sexual assault.
Pelosi issued a statement saying she had spoken directly with Swalwell and made her position clear. The allegations, she said, demand a serious process, not a campaign trail.
The move marks a sharp public break between two California Democrats who have long operated in the same political orbit. And it triggered a rapid collapse of support from party leaders, labor unions, and campaign staff that left Swalwell's gubernatorial bid in ruins within days.
Pelosi, as Breitbart News reported, framed her call in careful but unmistakable terms:
"The young woman who has made serious allegations against Congressman Swalwell must be respected and heard. This extremely sensitive matter must be appropriately investigated with full transparency and accountability. As I discussed with Congressman Swalwell, it is clear that is best done outside of a gubernatorial campaign."
She was not alone. California Sen. Adam Schiff and Sen. Alex Padilla, both Democrats, joined the chorus calling on Swalwell to step aside. AP News reported that major labor unions also withdrew their endorsements, and prominent supporters began pulling back across the board.
The damage went deeper than endorsements. House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar issued a joint statement demanding Swalwell end his campaign immediately and calling for a swift investigation, as the Washington Examiner reported.
"We call for a swift investigation into these incidents and for the Congressman to immediately end his campaign to be California's next Governor."
Campaign co-chairs Rep. Jimmy Gomez and Rep. Adam Gray resigned. Staff members issued a letter calling the allegations abhorrent. Swalwell's ActBlue page stopped accepting contributions. The infrastructure of his campaign didn't just crack, it emptied out.
Four women have come forward alleging that Swalwell engaged in sexual misconduct. CNN reported that one allegation involves the sexual assault of a former staffer. The San Francisco Chronicle, as Newsmax noted, reported that a former staffer alleged she had sexual encounters with Swalwell while he was her boss and that he twice sexually assaulted her when she was too intoxicated to consent.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office said it was investigating the alleged 2024 incident that reportedly occurred in New York.
The names of the accusers have not been publicly identified in the available reporting. Nor have the specific details of all four women's allegations been fully disclosed. But the volume, four accusers, a DA investigation, and a party-wide withdrawal of support, speaks to the seriousness of what Swalwell now faces.
Swalwell has denied all of the allegations. He told CNN the accusations are "false and come on eve of an election against the front-runner for governor." In a longer statement, he cast himself as a protector of women and signaled legal action:
"For nearly 20 years, I have served the public, as a prosecutor and a congressman and have always protected women. I will defend myself with the facts and where necessary bring legal action. My focus in the coming days is to be with my wife and children and defend our decades of service against these lies."
In a video statement, Fox News reported, Swalwell acknowledged personal failings in more general terms: "I have certainly made mistakes in judgment in my past, but those mistakes are between me and my wife."
That admission, vague as it was, sat uneasily next to his blanket denial. Swalwell called the allegations "flat false" and "absolutely false," insisting they "did not happen" and "have never happened." Whether those two messages can coexist is a question his own party has already answered by heading for the exits.
Pelosi's willingness to push Swalwell out of the governor's race is notable given her own record of standing by him through earlier controversy. In 2021, after revelations about Swalwell's relationship with a Chinese spy known as "Fang Fang," Pelosi re-appointed him to both the House Intelligence Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, two of the most sensitive panels in Congress.
At the time, Republicans raised serious questions about Swalwell's fitness to serve on those committees. Pelosi brushed those concerns aside. Now, faced with a different kind of scandal, she has reversed course, not on Swalwell's committee assignments, but on his political future.
Pelosi has long wielded enormous influence inside Democratic politics, and the California governor's race is no exception. She has yet to endorse any candidate in the race. But her public demand that Swalwell withdraw effectively ends his viability as a contender, regardless of whether he formally complies.
That kind of power, the ability to clear a field with a single statement, is something Pelosi has exercised before. She has been reported to maneuver behind the scenes on behalf of preferred candidates, and her interventions carry weight that few other Democratic figures can match.
The question worth asking is why Pelosi's threshold for action seems to shift depending on the political stakes. Swalwell's ties to a foreign intelligence operative were apparently not disqualifying for sensitive committee work. But allegations of sexual misconduct, in the middle of a competitive governor's race, crossed a line. The difference may have less to do with principle than with political calculus.
Swalwell ultimately suspended his campaign for governor. The Fox News report described the sequence bluntly: "His own party, led by Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Adam Schiff and Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, was demanding that he drop out of the race."
The speed of the collapse is worth noting. Within days of the allegations surfacing, Swalwell lost his campaign co-chairs, his union backing, his party leadership's support, and his fundraising apparatus. That is not a candidate who lost an argument. That is a candidate whose own side decided the liability was too great.
Pelosi's track record of picking winners and losers in contested races is well established. Her decision to publicly intervene here, rather than let the process play out quietly, suggests she saw Swalwell's continued candidacy as a threat not just to him, but to the party's broader interests in California.
Whether the Manhattan DA's investigation produces charges, whether Swalwell follows through on his threat of legal action against his accusers, and whether any formal ethics inquiry follows in Congress all remain open questions. What is already clear is that the Democratic establishment moved with unusual speed to cut Swalwell loose.
Swalwell is married with three children. He has served in Congress for nearly two decades, first as a prosecutor and then as a representative. He built a public brand around accountability and protecting the vulnerable. That brand now sits in direct conflict with the accusations against him.
Pelosi, for her part, has a long history of applying different standards depending on the political moment. She defended Swalwell when Republicans wanted him off intelligence committees. She pushed him out when his problems became her party's problems. The principle she cited, transparency and accountability, is real enough. But the timing tells its own story.
The Manhattan DA's investigation is the most concrete legal development to watch. If charges follow, Swalwell's troubles will extend far beyond a failed campaign. If they don't, his denials will carry more weight, though the political damage is already done.
No formal congressional ethics investigation has been announced. No one in the reporting has called for Swalwell to resign his House seat, though the Fox News report noted that some Democrats went beyond calling for him to leave the governor's race.
The California governor's race moves on without him. The Democratic field is now minus its most prominent casualty, and the party's leaders are hoping voters will focus on what comes next rather than what just happened.
Accountability is easy to demand when the political cost of silence is higher than the cost of speaking up. Pelosi found that line. The question is why it took this particular scandal, and not the last one, to get her there.