The Toyota Corolla shuttling Eric Swalwell to the San Francisco airport was already running well over the speed limit. It wasn’t enough. “‘Go as fast as you can. Go 90 or whatever,’” Dean Wallace, the staffer behind the wheel, recalled his boss telling him. “‘We’re not going to get in trouble. Just keep going.’” That ride to the airport more than 13 years ago, when Swalwell was about to miss his flight to Washington for his new membership orientation, was no one-off. As an ascendant Democratic House member, he would push his staff to drive so dangerously from one appointment to the next that one former congressional aide said she racked up numerous tickets for speeding or running red lights and was once chewed out by Capitol Police after an especially reckless maneuver. As a candidate for California governor, he’d say of the navigation app, “Waze is just the start of a negotiation,” and encourage his driver to disregard traffic laws, according to a staffer familiar with his campaign travel. It was an impulsive sense of urgency that reflected, almost too neatly, the ambitions and instincts that propelled Swalwell to the upper ranks of the Democratic Party and a credible shot at becoming California’s next governor. Not only was he willing to take risks to get to where he wanted to go, he was convinced — or at least, seemed to be — that he’d escape the consequences.Until last week, when his political career collapsed entirely. Swalwell has now been accused by multiple women of sexual assault; at least two others claim he harrassed them with unwanted come-ons and explicit photos. He faces criminal investigations into separate rape accusations in Manhattan and Los Angeles, and the Department of Justice also opened an investigation; he has denied all allegations of assault, though he has acknowledged “personal failings.” He withdrew from the governor’s race and resigned from Congress before his colleagues moved to expel him. Swalwell and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment. His downfall, beyond prompting a reckoning on the Hill about how such a prominent politician could act with impunity for so long, has forced a reappraisal of Swalwell among his one-time friends and allies. POLITICO Magazine spoke with 30 people who had a front-row seat to his rise from the Bay Area to Washington, including lawmakers, staffers and consultants. Many were granted anonymity to speak candidly… [TheTopNews] Read More.
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