Right Thing, Wrong Reasons

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

 

Congressional Democrats did the right thing when they refused to look away from the allegations of sexual harassment and assault that have put an end to seven-term Representative Eric Swalwell’s career in national politics.

 

Democratic lawmakers minced no words when describing the gravity of the accusations against their former colleague. But it would be naïve to attribute the speed with which they booted Swalwell from the ranks of respectable Democrats to an overriding moral imperative.

 

Many of the Democrats who came out in favor of Swalwell’s resignation argued that he should go in concert with Republican Representative Tony Gonzales, who had an affair with a married staffer who later killed herself. The “allegedly criminal behavior and abuses of power by these” members, Representative Kristen McDonald Rivet observed, are “obviously unacceptable.” “They should resign or be expelled,” said Representative Teresa Leger Fernández. “If they don’t,” Representative Jared Huffman wrote, “I will support voting to expel both of them.”

 

Republicans are not off the hook here. The sordid claims swirling around Gonzales have been public for months, but the party in power’s lethargic response to those allegations didn’t abate until a one-for-one expulsion deal was on the table. Likewise, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Swalwell was undone by the unique political circumstances that pertain at this moment.

 

The California representative’s philandry was, after all, an “open secret.” At least, that’s how Politico framed it in a shamelessly candid appraisal of the representative’s apparently thoroughly well-known penchant for impropriety. Democrats in Congress and their media allies were content to close their eyes to it for years, even going so far as to defend Swalwell against similar accusations from time to time. The party endorsed his reelection bids and named him to visible posts, including serving as a prosecutor during Donald Trump’s second impeachment. They gave him succor enough so that he saw no risk in running for president, much less the governorship of the largest state in the Union.

 

Likewise, it would be foolish to overlook the prevailing political conditions that made Democrats’ decision to jettison Swalwell that much easier. These new allegations against Swalwell coincided with the existential apprehension overtaking the Democratic Party as a crowded field of California gubernatorial candidates threatened to create a logjam in which two Republicans might emerge from the state’s blanket primary to compete against one another in the general gubernatorial election. It’s revealing that the Democrats, who (to their credit) used the singular pronoun when calling for Swalwell to suspend his gubernatorial campaign, shifted to the third-person plural when demanding that he join Gonzales in abdicating their seats in the federal legislature.

 

It is commendable that the House Ethics Committee took up the case against both Swalwell and Gonzalez, but there is a reason that members do not fear that committee or its toothless recommendations. “The ethics process is completely flawed,” one unnamed House Democrat told Axios last month. The committee is investigating two more members of both parties who deserve all the scrutiny they’re getting: Republican Cory Mills, who has been accused of domestic abuse and financial misconduct, among other allegations, and Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who is under federal indictment for allegedly misappropriating Covid-19 relief funds. No one in Washington is operating under the delusion that the Ethics Committee will impose consequences on these members, just as it would have been incapable of disciplining either Swalwell or Gonzalez.

 

For a moment, there was some talk of a deal to rid the House of all four of these tainted lawmakers in one fell swoop — a grand expurgatory bargain that would have cleansed the chamber of its dead weight. But whatever the arrangement was that led both Swalwell and Gonzalez to announce their resignations within minutes of one another was hashed out behind closed doors — a grubby little compromise that ensured no individual member would have their fingerprints on the arrangement.

 

We can welcome the outcome even if we mourn the process that produced it. But Democrats should not adorn themselves in laurels because they took the most politically expedient course of action, acknowledging an “open secret” only when it would cause them the least possible discomfort. Nor should Republicans pat themselves on the back for taking action only when doing so wouldn’t threaten their razor-thin House majority.

 

In Washington, doing the right thing is rarely easy, but the bare minimum is a low bar to clear.