Eric Swalwell has mastered the art of political theatrics, positioning himself as the self-appointed moral compass of California’s progressive aristocracy while leaving behind a trail of scandals that would have ended any other public career years ago. His downfall has been slow, loud, and messy, but today, on November 26, 2025, his reckless rhetoric finally collided with the consequences he’s been outrunning for a decade. And when the dust settles, he may go down not as a fearless resister, but as one of the most compromised and dangerously impulsive officials California has produced in a generation.
Long before he was calling for military disobedience on national television, Swalwell was tangled in the notorious Christine Fang affair, a counterintelligence nightmare that he pretended to shrug off, even as it exposed a stunning lapse in judgment. Fang, better known as “Fang Fang”, wasn’t merely a friendly face on the Bay Area fundraising circuit; she was a Chinese intelligence operative with a carefully crafted public persona and a laser-focused strategy for embedding herself in the orbits of rising American politicians. Swalwell didn’t just cross paths with her. He let her inside his circle, his campaign, and according to former staffers, into the kind of late-night meetings that would make any intelligence analyst cringe. While he claims he was simply “targeted,” and insists he cooperated with the FBI once briefed, the truth is that the damage was done. Money moved. Access was granted. A Chinese spy positioned herself as a close confidant of a sitting U.S. Congressman. When the story finally broke in 2020, Swalwell played the victim card as if the country had collectively misunderstood what a compromise looks like. But the shadow of that relationship has followed him ever since, resurfacing every time he steps in front of a camera to lecture the rest of us about patriotism and accountability.
By 2025, as Trump returned to the Oval Office and reestablished control over the federal agencies Swalwell once weaponized rhetorically, the congressman’s past was no longer a punchline. It became the backdrop to a much larger unraveling. While positioning himself as California’s next governor, Swalwell was hit with an investigation that landed harder than any Fox News segment ever could.
Bill Pulte, Trump’s newly appointed Federal Housing Finance Agency chief, uncovered what appears to be a textbook case of mortgage fraud in Swalwell’s 2012 Dublin home purchase. This wasn’t a minor clerical error or a disputed appraisal. Pulte flagged a maze of suspiciously structured loans, inflated valuations that pointed to potential kickbacks, and tax maneuvering through entities with no legitimate purpose other than shielding assets. He sent a blistering letter to the Department of Justice, calling for immediate prosecution. And the timing was brutal: it landed just days after Swalwell launched his gubernatorial run, complete with glossy campaign vans and rally speeches recycled from the impeachment era.
The moment the letter went public, Swalwell unraveled. He filed a 19-page lawsuit attacking Pulte, accusing him of orchestrating a “mortgage McCarthyism” campaign designed to “silence dissent.” He held an indignant press conference in Sacramento, barking at reporters about political witch hunts while his own donors quietly backed away. Privately, campaign insiders whispered that the DOJ had already assigned Special Counsel Ed Martin to fast-track charges that could land before year’s end. And while Swalwell dismissed everything as political smears, it became clear that his gubernatorial campaign was bleeding out before it ever left the driveway.
Then came the moment that pushed everything into a different category, a moment so reckless that even his allies struggled to defend it. Today, during a heated MSNBC segment criticizing President Trump’s executive orders on defense, Swalwell declared that members of the U.S. military should disobey Trump’s orders if they deem them “unlawful,” admonishing them to “heed your oath to the Constitution, not any one man.” The clip detonated across social media. Analyst Ian Jaeger posted it with a simple but devastating assessment: “BREAKING: Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell calls on the military to disobey President Trump’s orders if they are ‘unlawful.’ This is sedition.” Within minutes, the post was everywhere. Veterans’ groups lambasted him. Constitutional scholars questioned his intent. Conservatives labeled it open incitement. Even centrists recoiled at the sheer irresponsibility of a sitting congressman encouraging military personnel to override the Commander-in-Chief. One viral reply tied the moment right back to his most embarrassing scandal: “If sleeping with a spy isn’t unlawful, what is?”
Instead of recalibrating, Swalwell doubled down. In a follow-up interview with Don Lemon, he claimed, without irony, that active-duty service members privately confide in him, telling him they will serve as a “check” on Trump. He described himself as a conduit for military “whistle warriors” who reassure him that they “won’t betray their oath because this guy tells them to.” It was a bizarre moment of political fantasy, the kind of thing you’d expect from an influencer chasing engagement, not a member of Congress under federal investigation.
By dawn, the shape of Swalwell’s future had become unmistakable. His polls were collapsing. His governor campaign was effectively dead. Donors were fleeing. The mortgage investigation was tightening. The Fang Fang ghost was back in full force. And now he had walked himself face-first into a potential sedition inquiry, all while operating under the illusion that he is the lone moral safeguard against a duly elected President.
Eric Swalwell’s story is no longer about partisan noise or political rivalry. It is about a pattern of recklessness, compromised judgment, and a stunning inability to grasp the consequences of his own actions. He tried to reinvent himself as the hero of the resistance, the man willing to “take down bullies,” the crusader for democracy who saw threats everywhere except in his own reflection. But power has a way of exposing the cracks. And tonight, as the fallout from his MSNBC tirade rips across the country, the illusion has shattered entirely.
What remains is a politician drowning in his own self-created chaos: the spy scandal he never outran, the mortgage mess he can’t litigate away, the sedition controversy he ignited on live television, and a gubernatorial dream collapsing under the weight of its own hypocrisy. Eric Swalwell isn’t the savior he sells himself as. He’s the liability. And California, for once, seems ready to move on.
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