Candidate for governor of California Rep. Eric Swalwel, addresses his crowd of supporters at Local Edition bar in San Francisco during the California Democratic Party 2026 State Convention on Friday, Feb. 20, 2026.
Christina House/LATimes via Getty
The Trump administration is pushing the FBI to look into an old investigation on California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a sitting member of Congress and leading Democratic candidate for California governor, the Washington Post reported last week.
Swalwell, a former prosecutor and unsuccessful 2020 presidential candidate, called the FBI probe “nonsense” and suggested last week that the president’s directive is an attempt to influence the California governor’s race in which Swalwell says he is “the favorite.”
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“Through great reporting, we now know the outrageous ends the White House will go to target political opponents,” he said in an emailed statement to SFGATE. “As was Trump’s mortgage case against me, this decade-old story is, of course, nonsense.”
FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly has pushed investigators to revisit files from a decade-old investigation into Swalwell and a suspected Chinese operative, the outlet reported, citing three anonymous sources. Those sources said Patel assigned FBI agents based in the San Francisco bureau to look into those files on Swalwell and send them along to the White House.
The files date back between the years 2011 and 2015, when the FBI looked into a relationship Swalwell had with a woman who was suspected of being a Chinese agent and had reportedly helped with reelection fundraising in 2014. At the time, federal officials flagged this relationship, and Swalwell cut ties with her and cooperated with agents.
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Swalwell, who represents parts of Northern California, formerly worked as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County and was a city council member in Dublin before he was elected to Congress in 2012. He served as a House manager on the 2021 impeachment committee against Donald Trump, and also sued Trump and his close allies, alleging they incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riots.
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“The reason Trump is so desperately trying to stop me is not because I’m running for Governor of California, but because now I’m the favorite,” he said in his statement. “What Trump wants the most is to have a Western White House. An enabler on the opposite coast. A lot of people have bent the knee to this administration. But I will not. And neither will the people of California.”
Also in an interview with Politico on Sunday, Swalwell reiterated that it’s a smear campaign against him by Trump and his supporters.
“MAGA world has tried to smear me the whole way through on this,” Swalwell told the outlet. He said that his platform is to be the “fighter-protector that Governor Newsom has been” and that Trump and his supporters “see it as a threat.”
Other lawmakers have come out to blast the Trump administration for wasting FBI resources.
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Rep. Jimmy Gomez, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said that Patel is “wasting resources on this bulls—t” and called it a “political hit-job.”
Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, similarly called it an “abuse of the FBI.”
“Time and again, the President and his appointees have weaponized the Department of Justice against those who dare stand up to Trump,” he wrote on Twitter. “There is no doubt Trump and Kash Patel will stop at nothing to try to tell Californians who their next governor should be.
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Since announcing his candidacy in November, Swalwell has risen in the polls as a top Democratic candidate along with former Rep. Katie Porter and billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer. Two Republican candidates, former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, are leading in recent polls. Other Democratic candidates include Betty Yee, Antonio Villaraigosa, Tony Thurmond and Xavier Becerra. The primary is on June 2.