Swalwell Seizure: Video of the Disgraced Democrat’s FBI Airport Encounter Surfaces.
- Aug. 15, 2026 FBI agents serve a federal search warrant on Eric Swalwell at San Francisco International Airport and seize his iPhone and MacBook Pro — Twitchy, The Gateway Pundit
- 18 U.S.C. § 242 the federal civil-rights statute cited in the warrant — deprivation of rights under color of law, used to prosecute officials who abuse government power — The Gateway Pundit
- April 13, 2026 the date Swalwell resigned from Congress and dropped his California governor bid amid the sexual misconduct allegations — NPR, CNBC
- 5 women who have publicly accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct or assault, including allegations of rape — CNN, Forbes
Surveillance video obtained by The California Post and republished by Twitchy on September 1 shows former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) deplaning at San Francisco International Airport in a baseball cap, black hoodie and sneakers, only to be met by federal agents who converge on him at the gate. The footage is new to the public. The encounter it documents is not — it happened on August 15, more than two weeks before the video surfaced.
FBI agents served Swalwell with a search warrant at roughly 8:25 p.m. that Saturday and seized his white iPhone, its charging cable and wall adapter, and an Apple MacBook Pro. He was not detained or arrested. A second warrant was executed the next day at his Washington, D.C. home. The seizures mark the most aggressive step yet in a federal criminal investigation opened after Swalwell resigned from Congress in April following allegations of sexual misconduct from multiple women — an investigation that has nothing to do with the decade-old China-related controversy that has separately resurfaced around him this same month.
The footage runs just over a minute. Swalwell, wearing a backpack and pulling a rollbag, is approached by several FBI agents near his arrival gate as ordinary travelers stream past in the background. He appears calm and does not resist. Agents escort him through the terminal, up an escalator, and into a hallway marked “restricted area,” where the search warrant is served and the devices are collected. The video ends with Swalwell walking out of the airport on his own; he was free to leave once the search concluded.
The warrant itself remains sealed, but The Gateway Pundit reported that it cites 18 U.S.C. § 242 — deprivation of rights under color of law, the federal civil-rights statute typically reserved for prosecuting police officers and public officials accused of using their government position to violate someone’s legal rights. Investigators have not detailed their theory publicly, but multiple outlets reported the statute’s use suggests prosecutors are examining whether Swalwell leaned on his congressional office, staff, or influence to discourage or silence the women who have accused him.
Fox News broke the seizure itself five days after it happened, reporting that agents took the devices “as part of a federal investigation involving sexual assault allegations” against the former congressman. The Bureau has not issued a public statement explaining the warrant’s scope, and the Department of Justice has not confirmed what, if anything, has been found on the seized devices.
BREAKING: The FBI has seized former Rep. Eric Swalwell's electronic devices as part of a federal investigation involving sexual assault allegations against him. Federal agents took the devices from Swalwell Saturday at the San Francisco airport and Sunday from his Washington, D.C. home.
Seven months ago, Swalwell was a leading contender in California’s open governor’s race. That ended in April, when CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle published accounts from four women describing sexual misconduct, including a former staffer who said Swalwell raped her while she was too intoxicated to consent. A fifth accuser, Lonna Drewes, later alleged at a press conference that Swalwell drugged, choked and raped her in 2018. Two additional women said he sent them unsolicited explicit images. Swalwell suspended his gubernatorial campaign and, within days, announced his resignation from the House rather than face an expulsion vote colleagues in both parties were preparing to bring.
His attorney, Sara Azari, has said Swalwell “admitted to extramarital contact with women” but denied that any encounter was nonconsensual. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department both opened criminal inquiries after the CNN and Chronicle reporting; neither has announced charges. The August device seizure is the first sign that a parallel federal investigation, distinct from those local probes, has escalated to the point of executing warrants against a former sitting congressman.
Swalwell suspends his campaign for California governor amid furor over sex assault allegations:
Posted the day Swalwell announced he was ending his gubernatorial bid, hours before his resignation from Congress. No linkable truthsocial.com post ID was located; text and date verified against the trumpstruth.org public archive.
Swalwell’s name has circulated in a second, unrelated federal story this same week, and the two are easy to conflate. That older matter traces to 2014-2015, when Christine “Fang Fang” Fang, a Chinese national later assessed by the FBI to be tied to Beijing’s Ministry of State Security, raised money for Swalwell’s reelection and placed an intern in his office. Federal investigators warned Swalwell in 2015; he cut contact, and Fang left the country. Both the FBI and, in 2023, the House Ethics Committee closed their reviews without finding wrongdoing. Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel began pushing in March 2026 to declassify and release the decade-old files anyway, and the White House recirculated them on August 31 — the day before the airport video surfaced.
FBI had evidence Swalwell got illegal donations from suspected Chinese spy, bombshell memos show:
This post concerns the separate, decade-old Fang Fang matter — not the sexual-misconduct investigation or the airport device seizure described above. No wrongdoing was found by the FBI or the House Ethics Committee in that review.
The two stories share a subject, a week, and a president eager to publicize both — but they are legally and factually separate. The Fang Fang files concern a 2014 campaign-finance and counterintelligence question that two prior reviews closed. The August warrant concerns an open criminal investigation into sexual-misconduct allegations, citing a civil-rights statute that has nothing to do with China.
Azari has pushed back hard on the timing of the federal escalation, saying she saw “nothing new” in the underlying allegations and raising concern about “the apparent use of federal law enforcement information to punish an outspoken critic” of the administration. Swalwell has not commented directly on the airport video since it surfaced, though in his April resignation statement he argued that colleagues were trying to expel him “without due process, within days of an allegation being made.”
WOW! New footage shows the exact moment ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell got SWARMED by FBI agents at the airport, so they could seize his devices after getting off the plane — California Post. After this, they stormed his house to take more electronics. FAFO, SWALWELL!
The video’s release turned a two-week-old law-enforcement story back into a viral one. Conservative outlets that first reported the seizure in mid-August — Fox News, The Gateway Pundit, Daily Wire — picked it back up; Twitchy’s September 1 piece, built around the same California Post footage, is the version currently driving the story’s renewed traffic. Swalwell has not been charged with any crime, and no court has ruled on any of the underlying allegations against him.
The video that went viral September 1 documents a real event: FBI agents served former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) with a federal search warrant at San Francisco International Airport on August 15 and seized his phone and laptop, citing a civil-rights statute used against officials accused of abusing government power. That warrant is part of the federal investigation opened after four—now five—women accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct, allegations that ended his gubernatorial campaign and forced his resignation from Congress in April. It is not connected to the separate, decade-old Fang Fang China controversy that resurfaced the same week. Swalwell denies wrongdoing and has not been charged.
