A left-wing activist says women are preparing to come forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Rep. Eric Swalwell, the Democratic frontrunner in California's gubernatorial primary. Instead of digging into those claims, CBS News spent its Thursday coverage trying to map the connections between the activist and one of Swalwell's rivals, a move that looks less like journalism and more like opposition research on behalf of a candidate under fire.
The sequence matters. For the better part of a week, Cheyenne Hunt, a political media figure affiliated with Gen-Z for Change and a former Capitol Hill staffer, has publicly claimed that a number of women are about to accuse Swalwell of misconduct ranging from uncomfortable comments to what she described as potentially criminal behavior. Hunt posted a video and written statements online making the case. Swalwell's campaign denied everything. Then CBS News published a story with this headline: "Katie Porter and influencer behind Swalwell allegations 'don't have a relationship to speak of,' campaign says."
Read that headline again. The network didn't investigate whether the allegations have merit. It investigated whether the woman making them knows one of Swalwell's opponents.
Hunt's allegations, as Fox News reported, are specific and blunt. She shared a message alleging Swalwell "has slept with many of his interns" and makes them sign non-disclosure agreements. She said Swalwell tried to hit on her when she was 19 and slid into her direct messages.
In a subsequent post, Hunt wrote:
"The number of credible women who have come forward since I posted my video is pretty shocking, and connecting them with the investigative reporting teams who have been working on breaking this for years has greatly expedited this process. I am confident this story will break soon."
She also addressed the NDA angle directly, claiming that others may have stayed quiet because they believed non-disclosure agreements required their silence. "While it is true that most NDAs would be unenforceable under these circumstances," Hunt wrote, "most people don't know that until they speak to a lawyer."
Hunt told reporters she had been contacted by multiple women describing a similar pattern involving employees, interns, and fans. As Newsmax reported, she framed her decision to go public in moral terms: "When I saw there were others whose experiences followed the same pattern of manipulation and abuse of power, I knew I could not stay silent."
It is important to note: as of the latest reporting, no named woman has come forward publicly with a specific, on-the-record accusation. Hunt's claims remain unverified. That matters.
Swalwell himself denied the claims on Wednesday evening and stated his office has never required anyone to sign an NDA. His campaign went further. Spokesman Micah Beasley called the allegations a "false, outrageous rumor" and blamed the timing on political rivals and conspiracy theorists.
"This false, outrageous rumor is being spread 27 days before an election begins by flailing opponents who have sadly teamed up with MAGA conspiracy theorists because they know Eric Swalwell is the frontrunner in this race."
The campaign also said no ethics complaints have ever been lodged against Swalwell by staff. That's a factual claim that can be checked, and one that a serious news organization might want to verify independently rather than take at face value.
But CBS News chose a different path. The question of whether congressional misconduct records should be public has been a live issue on Capitol Hill. CBS could have pressed on that front. Instead, the network went after the accuser's biography.
The CBS report, as Breitbart's John Nolte detailed, tried to build a circumstantial case that Hunt and former Rep. Katie Porter, who is also running for governor against Swalwell, have a meaningful relationship. The implication was clear: maybe Hunt is doing Porter's dirty work.
The evidence CBS marshaled was thin. Hunt enrolled at UC Irvine Law in the fall of 2018, around the time Porter was running for Congress. Porter delivered the commencement address at Hunt's graduation in 2021. Three years after that, Hunt ran for an Orange County congressional seat and posted a photograph with Porter on social media, calling her a trailblazer.
That's it. A graduation speech at a university with over 35,000 students. A social media photo. A shared geography in Orange County Democratic politics.
CBS also noted that Hunt interned on Capitol Hill for a Democratic senator while Porter was serving in the House. Working in the same building complex in Washington does not constitute a conspiracy. Thousands of young staffers and interns cycle through the Capitol every session.
Porter's campaign told CBS the two "don't have a relationship to speak of." CBS ran that denial as the headline, but the entire frame of the story suggested otherwise, without producing any evidence of coordination.
The broader pattern here deserves attention. When allegations surface against a Democrat in a competitive primary, the instinct of legacy media is not to investigate the allegations but to investigate the people making them. The question shifts from "Is this true?" to "Who benefits politically?"
That's a legitimate question, but it shouldn't be the only question, and it certainly shouldn't be the first one a major news network pursues. The timing of an allegation does not determine its truth. Allegations made during campaign season are not automatically false. And a news outlet that spends its resources tracing the educational history of an accuser rather than examining the conduct of the accused is making an editorial choice about whom to protect.
The California governor's race is already a messy affair for Democrats. Recent polling has shown two Republicans leading the field in at least one Democratic-commissioned survey, a sign that the party's internal divisions are creating real openings for the right in a state long considered a progressive stronghold.
Swalwell's campaign clearly wants to make this about MAGA. That framing is convenient. It turns every uncomfortable question into a partisan attack and every accuser into a tool of the opposition. It's the same playbook Democrats have used in other contexts, dismiss, deflect, blame the other side.
But Hunt is not a MAGA activist. She's a Gen-Z progressive who ran for Congress as a Democrat. Her organization, Gen-Z for Change, is a left-wing outfit. If Swalwell's team wants to argue these claims are fabricated, they'll need a better villain than their own base.
Several important questions remain open. What specific allegations, if any, will named women make on the record? What investigative teams has Hunt connected these women with, and what have those teams found after what she describes as years of work? Do any NDAs actually exist, and if so, what do they cover?
On Swalwell's side: has his office ever settled a complaint, formally or informally? Has any staff member ever raised concerns through internal channels? These are straightforward questions that a news organization with CBS's resources could answer.
The broader climate in Washington around political accountability and misconduct has shifted in recent years, with both parties facing pressure to open records and confront uncomfortable truths. Whether that pressure reaches Swalwell depends on whether journalists decide to do their jobs, or keep doing opposition research for the candidates they prefer.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party continues to face fractures on multiple fronts. Internal disagreements over policy and strategy have spilled into public view on issues from DHS funding to primary politics. The Swalwell situation is another crack in a coalition that keeps insisting everything is fine.
Hunt's claims may prove true. They may prove false. But the public deserves a press corps willing to find out, not one that spends its time building a guilt-by-graduation-ceremony case against the woman asking the questions.
When a major network's first instinct is to protect the politician rather than pursue the allegation, the problem isn't the accuser's résumé. It's the network's priorities.