{"id":441635,"date":"2026-08-24T01:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T01:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/441635\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T01:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T01:44:07","slug":"search-warrants-are-supposed-to-be-secret-why-was-eric-swalwells-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/441635\/","title":{"rendered":"Search warrants are supposed to be secret. Why was Eric Swalwell\u2019s public?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For subscribersPublished Aug. 23, 2026at5:59pm<\/p>\n

It was anything but the usual sleepy dog days of August this week when news broke that former Rep. Eric Swalwell is under investigation by the FBI for potential civil rights violations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a strange element to the story: How did part of a federal search warrant document \u2014 a record that is almost always under seal \u2014 become public? The warrant, first reported by The Standard<\/a>, showed that the feds seized Swalwell\u2019s iPhone and MacBook Pro at 8:25 p.m. on Saturday, and other news organizations reported that the seizure occurred at San Francisco International Airport. His Washington, D.C., home was searched Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seamus Hughes, considered one of the nation\u2019s foremost experts on PACER, the website where federal court documents are accessed, told Power Play the situation was highly unusual.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the context of two decades of court watching, the Northern District of California rarely, if ever, has made search warrants available on PACER for an ongoing investigation,\u201d he said in an email. A former federal official echoed this: \u201cThose things typically never, ever, see the light of day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For subscribersPublished Aug. 23, 2026at5:59pm It was anything but the usual sleepy dog days of August this week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[24115,845,4637,101,103,102,104,106,105,36094],"class_list":["post-441635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-eric-swalwell","tag-labor","tag-power-play","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-trump-vs-california"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441635","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=441635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}