Lonna Drewes recounts that, inexplicably, she was paralyzed upon arriving at the room where then-Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell was staying. The model had only had one glass of wine during a dinner in Los Angeles, California, where she sought to secure the support of a strategic ally for her budding political career. She believes Swalwell put a substance in her drink to rape her without resistance. The incident happened in 2018.
Read more Johan Vásquez, the gladiator of Navojoa and Javier Aguirre
“He drugged me, raped me, and strangled me… I couldn’t move my arms. He was on top of me, strangling me, and all I could do was watch. I passed out. I thought I was dead,” she recalled that dark chapter of her life in an interview with CNN.
Drewes’ testimony adds to that of other women accusing Swalwell of sexual assault, ranging from receiving unsolicited nude photos to making graphic descriptions of terrible rapes. The Democrat’s downfall was imminent: first, he resigned from his successful campaign for governor of California and then from his seat in Congress. He still has to respond to investigations conducted by the Los Angeles County sheriff’s office and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Nevertheless, he continues to deny the allegations against him and warns that he would take legal action against those who “orchestrated” what he calls a campaign to remove him from the race to succeed Gavin Newsom.
“These accusations are false, fabricated, and deeply offensive… designed to destroy the reputation of a man who has been in public service for twenty years,” said Sara Azari, the now-former legislator’s lawyer, in a statement. “The timing, nature, and coordinated release of these vile and atrocious accusations speak for themselves… We trust that the truth will prevail.”
Drewes said at a press conference on Tuesday that she met with Swalwell three times and considered him a friend. At the third meeting, he told her he needed to return to his hotel room to get something he had forgotten. It was a pretext to take her to the place where he would rape her, according to her account. “I woke up at 4:00 a.m. He was next to me (in the hotel room). And I left,” she said. For almost eight years, the woman thought about going to the authorities but stopped, she said, because of her assailant’s political influence.
“When I found out he was running for governor, I thought: ‘God, this can’t happen’… I was waiting for someone else to speak up,” Drewes told CNN. Her wait ended on Friday when the first accusers raised their voices, including a former Swalwell employee who claims to have been sexually assaulted by the ex-congressman in New York City in 2024. “My motivation was to do it for other women. I know I can’t be the only one… For a long time, I wanted to report him,” Drewes added to that outlet.
Before Drewes’ testimony became public, Swalwell faced the camera in a video he posted on his social media. “They never happened,” he said about the allegations that were beginning to surface. “You know who I am,” he emphasized in part of his statement directed at his supporters, trying to salvage his gubernatorial campaign and retain his seat. “As a prosecutor, I went to court… particularly on behalf of victims of sexual abuse.”
At Tuesday’s press conference, Lisa Bloom, Drewes’ lawyer, called that video “verbiage and a manipulation tactic.”
A meteoric career
Before Swalwell fell off the cliff, he had become a politician with a promising future. His political campaign described him as someone who “was raised by Republicans in Dublin, California,” then “switched sides,” convinced that “Democrats had better ideas.”
The son of a police officer and an entrepreneur, he was able to enroll in the University of Maryland School of Law thanks to a sports scholarship and was the first in his family to graduate. His first professional job was in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. At age 29, he became a city councilman in his hometown. Three years later, in 2013, his career took off toward broader horizons: he defeated Congressman Pete Stark, dean of the California delegation with 20 terms in office, at the polls. Thus, an emerging talent arrived at the Capitol, which was controlled by Republicans at that time. Barack Obama was leading the country.
Read more Bargain in sight: the yoga and pilates bag with mat holder that is a hit costs less than €18
“He became one of the Democrats’ favorite commentators… And he spent time in the waiting rooms of TV studios, mingling with famous people,” said a former collaborator quoted by The Washington Post in an article describing how Swalwell made his way in Congress thanks to his close relationship with notable Democratic Party figures and by striking blows at President Donald Trump.
At one of the peaks of his career, in 2020, he was a presidential candidate and participated in a debate in Miami where he asked Joe Biden to “pass the torch,” something that eventually happened.
He had been gaining points within his party, such as leading the Congressional investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections and participating in the two impeachment trials against Trump. The anecdotes about what happened behind the scenes in the failed attempt to expel the Republican magnate from the White House are narrated in his book End Game.
“The fiercest face of Democratic resistance.” That is how he describes himself on his still-active gubernatorial campaign website. His main campaign promise was “to keep the worst president in history out of our homes, off our streets, and out of our lives… The president has militarized our streets, canceled cancer research, cut funding for clean energy projects, and is targeting our immigrant friends and neighbors at their workplaces, their children’s schools, and their churches.”
“Many candidates talk about confronting Trump. I am confronting him in real time,” he claimed. “I am leading the Democrats’ effort in Congress to investigate the events of January 6” of 2021, referring to the mob of Trump supporters who, at the end of his first term, stormed the Capitol to try to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral victory.
Shortly before the San Francisco Chronicle published a report on the accusations of three complainants, Swalwell said he feared the federal administration would file false criminal charges against him to prevent him from governing one of the Democratic Party’s main strongholds. “We have the opportunity to write the history of a new California, not Donald Trump,” he said in an interview on the podcast The Joy Reid Show.
In November, he threw his hat into the ring for the tight race for governor of California and almost immediately took the lead. Unions and prominent Democrats backed him. Now, however, he is accused of leading “a double life” and practically deceiving them. “That is absolutely false,” responded Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, when asked if she knew about these accusations during a forum at George Washington University.
Being the new political figure in the eye of the storm over sexual assault allegations, his name hangs suspended between the astonishment of those reading the descriptions of his accusers and mockery on social media. “Release the Eric Swalwell files,” someone wrote in the comments of the Facebook post in which he denied all accusations.