Rep. Eric Swalwell is fighting for his political life after multiple women accused the California Democrat of sexual misconduct, allegations he calls "flat false." But conservatives have long memories, and Swalwell's own words from the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle are making his defense far harder to swallow.
Nearly eight years ago, Swalwell stood among the loudest Democratic voices demanding that unproven accusations against Kavanaugh be treated as near-gospel. He urged a pause in the Supreme Court confirmation proceedings, called for additional investigation, and insisted that accusers be heard, even before their claims were tested. Now, facing accusations of his own, he wants the opposite standard applied to himself.
The contradiction is not subtle. It is the kind of double standard that corrodes public trust in Washington, and it deserves a full accounting.
Newsmax reported that several women have come forward with accusations against Swalwell ranging from inappropriate messages to more serious misconduct. The specific details of those allegations, including the identities of the accusers, the dates, and the locations of the alleged incidents, have not been publicly disclosed in full.
Swalwell responded with a video posted to his X account, in which he denied the claims categorically. He said the allegations "did not happen" and vowed to fight them.
"They did not happen. They have never happened."
He acknowledged making "mistakes in judgment" in his personal life but drew a firm line, calling the accusations "flat false" and pledging to contest them "with everything that I have."
That language, the blanket denial, the appeal for fairness, the insistence that unproven allegations should not define a man, will sound familiar to anyone who watched the Kavanaugh hearings in 2018. The difference is that Swalwell spent those hearings arguing the exact opposite.
During the bitter fight over Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, Democrats seized on accusations of sexual misconduct to try to derail the confirmation. Swalwell was among the most vocal. He called for a pause in the proceedings to allow additional investigation. He urged that accusers be heard, even when their claims had not been proven.
In an interview on MS NOW at the time, Swalwell made a pointed argument about the weight of multiple accusations. He posed a question that now reads like an indictment of his own situation:
"What are the chances that three or four women, independently, who never met each other, would have similar experiences with one person?"
That was the standard Swalwell applied to Kavanaugh, a man who denied every allegation, who cooperated with an FBI review, and who was ultimately confirmed to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh has since served on the bench and established a judicial record that defies easy partisan caricature.
But in 2018, Swalwell was not interested in nuance. He was interested in a scalp. The mere existence of multiple accusers, he argued, was itself evidence. Due process was an inconvenience. The accusers deserved belief; the accused deserved suspicion.
Apply Swalwell's own 2018 logic to his current situation. Several women, apparently unconnected, have made similar accusations against one man. By the congressman's own test, that pattern should be treated as significant. It should trigger investigation, a pause in his political ambitions, and a presumption that the accusers deserve to be heard.
Instead, Swalwell wants the benefit of the doubt. He wants the public to accept his blanket denial. He wants his acknowledgment of vague "mistakes in judgment" to serve as a firewall against more serious charges.
That is his right. Every American, including every member of Congress, deserves the presumption of innocence. Conservatives have always believed that. It was conservatives who defended Kavanaugh's right to due process when Democrats tried to destroy his career on the basis of uncorroborated accusations.
The issue is not whether Swalwell deserves fairness. He does. The issue is that he denied that same fairness to someone else when it was politically useful, and now expects the rest of us not to notice.
The political damage is already spreading. Swalwell's gubernatorial campaign has been thrown into turmoil. Some allies have distanced themselves. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are weighing possible disciplinary action, including potential expulsion votes.
That last detail is worth pausing on. Expulsion from the House of Representatives is an extraordinary measure, reserved historically for the most serious offenses. The fact that it is even being discussed, however preliminarily, signals that the allegations against Swalwell are being taken seriously by his own colleagues.
The Supreme Court itself has remained a flashpoint in recent months. Kavanaugh and Justice Jackson recently clashed publicly over the Court's emergency docket, a reminder that the institution Democrats tried to reshape by destroying Kavanaugh's reputation continues to function, and to generate fierce debate on its own terms.
Swalwell, meanwhile, spent years positioning himself as a champion of women and a crusader against misconduct. He has said he spent decades advocating for victims of sexual assault. That record now sits in direct tension with the accusations against him, and with the way he chose to weaponize similar accusations against a political opponent.
The broader emergency-docket battles at the Supreme Court, including complaints from Justice Sotomayor about the pace of rulings, show that the Court Kavanaugh joined remains at the center of the country's most consequential legal fights. Democrats failed to keep him off the bench. The tools they used, including Swalwell's brand of accusation-as-evidence reasoning, did lasting damage to the confirmation process and to public faith in fair proceedings.
None of this means Swalwell is guilty. The allegations against him remain just that, allegations. They have not been proven. The accusers have not been publicly identified. The details are thin. A fair process should determine the truth.
But that is precisely the point. A fair process is what Swalwell refused to grant Brett Kavanaugh. He demanded that the mere number of accusers be treated as dispositive. He argued that a pause, an investigation, and a presumption of credibility for the accusers were the minimum requirements of decency.
Now he wants a different set of rules. He wants his denial accepted at face value. He wants his "mistakes in judgment" to be treated as a separate matter from the accusations. He wants the public to wait for evidence before passing judgment.
That is exactly the standard conservatives argued for in 2018. Kavanaugh himself has continued to defend process and institutional norms even as critics attack the Court from the left. The principle that accusations must be tested, not simply believed, was right then and it is right now.
Swalwell's problem is not that he is asking for fairness. His problem is that he spent years telling the country fairness was optional when the accused was on the other side of the aisle.
Washington is full of people who set standards they never expect to live by. Every so often, the bill comes due.
