The Return of ‘We Missed the Story’

By Becket Adams

Sunday, April 19, 2026

 

You have to give CNN’s Brian Stelter this much: Nobody is as reliably wrong as he is.

 

That counts for something, right?

 

On April 13, the self-appointed public relations agent for the legacy press gave the news business a metaphorical pat on the back, crediting investigative journalists with forcing disgraced Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) to scuttle his gubernatorial campaign and resign from the House of Representatives after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment and assault.

 

“Eric Swalwell ending his bid for California governor is, among other things, a testament to the power of investigative reporting,” Stelter boasted.

 

It is not. No one comes away from this story looking good, least of all members of the press.

 

The allegations against Swalwell are as serious as they get. The alleged predation, which Swalwell denies, spans more than a decade, stretching back to at least his first term in Congress in 2012. Worst of all, journalists and insiders in Washington, D.C., and California now say they first heard rumors about the congressman’s secret life years earlier.

 

Gee, fellas. A decade-plus is a long time to not do anything with an allegation stretching from the nation’s capital to the Golden State.

 

“Rumors about Eric Swalwell’s sexual misconduct have swirled in D.C. for years,” said former Axios reporter Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian. “I first heard these rumors in 2020, in the course of my other reporting about Swalwell. I was neither a politics reporter nor a women’s issues reporter, so I could not chase them down.”

 

She added, “I very much wanted to report it out myself. But #MeToo stories on the Hill aren’t related to my beat, as much as I personally wish I could report them out. I passed the tip along to colleagues on the Hill beat.”

 

For the record, there is no rule in journalism preventing a reporter from pursuing a tip simply because it drifts slightly outside his or her beat, though some newsrooms are stricter than others in this respect. Allen-Ebrahimian’s explanation is especially puzzling when you remember that, in her role covering China, she was one of the Axios reporters who broke the story of Swalwell’s relationship with a Chinese spy.

 

California politics insider Steven Tavares offered a similar account: “I’ve covered Eric [Swalwell] since he was a member of the Dublin City Council. Shortly after being elected to Congress in 2013, his behavior towards women was known by all levels of our local government and the Alameda County Democratic Party.”

 

Then there’s this curious 2017 tidbit from CNN: During the height of the #MeToo movement, the network reported that “more than half a dozen interviewees independently named one California congressman for pursuing female staffers.” CNN chose not to name the lawmaker or pursue the claims further, citing a lack of verification.

 

Five women have now accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct. One allegation involves strangulation and rape. Three women describe “blackout” experiences.

 

It’s difficult to square the caution that the press exercised for Swalwell with the recklessness with which it pursued the thin and obviously dubious allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

 

We all remember the confirmation hearings, when newsrooms such as CNN eagerly platformed even the most outlandish claims of sexual misconduct.

 

Our media has  a two-tied system of standards. It had no problem legitimizing even anonymous allegations against Kavanaugh but passed on reporting the far more credible allegations against Swalwell, claiming a lack of corroborating evidence (they also didn’t have corroborating evidence in Kavanaugh’s case, but no matter!).

 

It’s really as simple as selective caution, and one can’t help but notice to whom the courtesy is extended.

 

Lastly, as far as crediting investigative journalists with Swalwell’s downfall goes: Be serious.

 

We recognize an opposition-research dump when we see one.

 

The press didn’t suddenly crack the Swalwell story; it languished for years despite being what reporters themselves called an open secret. The information surfaced only when Swalwell complicated the Democratic Party’s odds in the California gubernatorial race.

 

We can venture a pretty good guess as to what happened: Democratic operatives fed reporters the dirt.

 

Party strategist Michael Trujillo claimed as much:

 

One note on the Swalwell stuff — (this isn’t confirmed) but a reporter with Politico was working on verifying the rumors on Swalwell when he was running for President. (He’s no longer with the publication.) Two days before he was scheduled to sit down with this reporter Swalwell dropped out of the race. The energy disappeared to potentially take him out, the victims if they were even willing to go on the record never did. He slithered back to his safe house seat. December 2025 was too early to take down Swalwell we had to wait til his paperwork was ALL IN running for governor March 2026, so the head of the snake could be chopped off and he had no safe house seat to slither back to this time. Hate the strategy fine, but for folks unsure if this would work, we had to make sure he couldn’t get away like he did in 2020.

 

Naturally, take Trujillo’s account with a grain of salt; strategists lie for a living. Yet nothing he said is hard to believe given the pattern.

 

Reporters claim they had heard rumors of Swalwell’s misconduct for years, yet they did nothing. Suddenly, when the party needed Swalwell gone, the story materialized.

 

We’ve seen this sort of thing before, most recently with the White House press corps pretending not to notice that former President Joe Biden’s brains had turned to mush.

 

It’s a stutter! Those are cheap fakes! He’s as sharp as a tack!

 

Then Biden himself removed all doubt as to his mental acuity, or lack thereof, and the same press decided all at once that the truth of Biden’s decline could no longer be ignored. Never mind that the about-face coincided exactly with Democratic power brokers reaching the same conclusion.

 

From dismissing concerning videos as “cheap fakes” to hawking books about how everyone knew Biden was a dotard, and the only thing that changed in that time was the opinion of Democratic leadership.

 

Similarly, the press simply couldn’t report on this Swalwell business until it suddenly “could.”

 

A high-profile member of Congress allegedly drugged and raped women and somehow got away with it for more than a decade, through the #MeToo era and even a presidential campaign. Until now, reporters just couldn’t report the story, even though they claim they knew Swalwell had a reputation as a creep and predator. The press couldn’t lock it down, choosing instead to demonstrate a level of responsibility that was wholly absent for the duration of Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

 

Then Swalwell becomes a problem in the California gubernatorial race, and the next thing you know, those rumors no one could confirm suddenly appear in print.

 

All it took was seven terms in Congress, nearly a half-dozen victims, and possibly one spiked investigation in 2020.

 

Hooray for journalists indeed.