He argued that Pulte, angered by Swalwell\u2019s criticism of president Donald Trump, violated the First Amendment\u2019s \u201cbedrock prohibition on viewpoint-based retaliation\u201d by obtaining his private mortgage information and forwarding a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for Swalwell said Pulte searched the private mortgage records of several prominent Democrats, targeting \u201cone of the president\u2019s most vocal and visible critics in Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pulte also sent referrals involving other high\u2011profile Democrats, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, as well as Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, according to court filings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a statement, Swalwell campaign spokesperson Micah Beasley said the lawsuit\u00a0effectively deterred further action. \u201cWe called his bluff. He never brought it,\u201d Beasley said. \u201cCase closed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mortgage probe raised First Amendment, privacy concerns<\/p>\n
Swalwell framed the fight in constitutional and privacy terms. \u201cThere\u2019s a reason the First Amendment \u2014 the freedom of speech \u2014 comes before all others,\u201d he said when the suit was filed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He argued that Pulte, angered by Swalwell\u2019s criticism of president Donald Trump, violated the First Amendment\u2019s \u201cbedrock prohibition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,92701,9,8,105641,40772],"class_list":["post-233044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-gubernatorial-race","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-mortgage-fraud","tag-rep-eric-swalwell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}