Former Rep. Eric Swalwell\u2019s old congressional committee refunded about $200,000 in political contributions after he abandoned his campaign for California governor and resigned from Congress following accusations of sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n
Swalwell refunded political contributions to dozens of donors to his congressional campaign in May, according to a\u00a0new financial filing<\/a>\u00a0with the Federal Election Commission, after reports of sexual assault alleged against him\u00a0surfaced<\/a>\u00a0in April.<\/p>\n Federal filings also indicate Swalwell\u2019s congressional committee paid about $50,000 on April 9 for \u201clegal & accounting services\u201d to criminal defense lawyer Sara Azari, whose\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0advertises \u201cHigh-Profile Sexual Misconduct & #metoo Defense.\u201d<\/p>\n Swalwell\u2019s committee footed other legal bills, as well: $23,998 to Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass, a San Francisco legal firm, on April 3 for \u201clegal fees,\u201d and $25,677 to national legal firm Greenberg Traurig for \u201clegal & accounting services.\u201d<\/p>\n The Swalwell campaign committee did not respond to a request for comment asking for the nature of these payments<\/p>\n Swalwell\u2019s congressional campaign started the year with about $289,000 cash on hand, according to a previous FEC report. Now the former congressman\u2019s committee has about $11,000.<\/p>\n Elected to Congress\u00a0in 2012<\/a>, Swalwell\u00a0briefly ran for president<\/a>\u00a0during the 2020 election.<\/p>\n Swalwell also faced many scandals during his political career \u2014 from allegedly\u00a0associating<\/a>\u00a0with a Chinese spy and\u00a0accepting<\/a>\u00a0a paid trip to the Middle East in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, to using his political position to\u00a0promote<\/a>\u00a0his AI startup. Despite these troubles, he continued to remain relevant in Democratic politics \u2014 and for a while, he led a Democratic primary to become governor of California.<\/p>\n Now, after the disgraced former congressman has retreated from public life, he is facing a\u00a0federal investigation<\/a>\u00a0over alleged sexual misconduct after the\u00a0San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0CNN<\/a>\u00a0reported he had inappropriate relationships with several female congressional staffers. One of these staffers said the congressman sexually assaulted her two times and sent her inappropriate pictures through social media.<\/p>\n Swalwell\u00a0has<\/a>\u00a0denied<\/a>\u00a0the accusations.<\/p>\n Quickly after these allegations, Swalwell\u2019s political allies, such as Sens. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, and Adam Schiff, D-California, called him to suspend his bid for governor.<\/p>\n In May, Gallego\u2019s Senate campaign committee\u00a0gave<\/a>\u00a0$19,000 it received from Swalwell\u2019s political committee to an anti-sexual violence organization in Arizona.<\/p>\n This story was produced as part of a partnership between\u00a0NOTUS\u00a0<\/a>\u2014 a publication from the nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute \u2014 and\u00a0NEWSWELL<\/a>, home of\u00a0Times of San Diego<\/a>,\u00a0Santa Barbara News-Press<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Stocktonia<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Rep. Eric Swalwell\u2019s old congressional committee refunded about $200,000 in political contributions after he abandoned his campaign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,1752,24115,8406,13,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-404665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-congress","tag-eric-swalwell","tag-notus","tag-politics","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404665","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=404665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}