Let’s review the spectacular demolition of California’s former golden boy.
Eric Swalwell didn’t simply resign from his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He detonated his own political career on April 14 after a wave of women came forward with sexual misconduct allegations. The centerpiece of that pile of legal dynamite came from Lonna Drewes, who accused him of raping her during a 2018 encounter in West Hollywood. This isn’t some fever swamp on social media fueled by anonymous screenshots. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is conducting an active criminal investigation. Drewes alleged that the two met on three occasions, during which Swalwell offered to introduce her to people who could help her business and political ambitions. She claims that during the third meeting, after drinking what she says was a single glass of wine, she became unexpectedly incapacitated. She alleges that Swalwell took her to his hotel room, where he raped and choked her until she lost consciousness.
At a Beverly Hills press conference, Drewes said she delayed coming forward because she feared Swalwell's political influence, legal background, and family ties to law enforcement. She also said she documented the events in personal journals and later discussed them during therapy.
That same week, Swalwell somehow found enough time to torch his campaign for governor. That trick took some real talent. He entered the race as the frontrunner and managed to reduce his candidacy to smoking rubble in a matter of days. Apparently, "future governor" and "felony defendant" don't poll well together, even in California.
Since then? Swalwell has pulled off an Amelia Earhart impression so convincing that nobody seems to know where he went.
At one point, he landed in the guest house of his former billionaire benefactor, timeshare mogul Stephen Cloobeck. Emphasis on former. Cloobeck's generosity ended when he personally escorted Swalwell off the property with all the warmth of a prison warden. His farewell reportedly summed it up nicely: "You busted the trust… get the [bleep] out of here."
That scene deserves its own sitcom spinoff, perhaps from the TV show Swalwell Flambe. Stephen Cloobeck suddenly playing America's moral conscience ranks somewhere between Jeffrey Epstein teaching ethics and Bernie Madoff offering investment seminars. This is the Diamond Resorts founder who sold his company to Apollo Global Management in 2016, soaked up reality-TV attention on Undercover Boss, and launched a vanity campaign for California governor under the breathtakingly cringeworthy slogan, "California Get a Cloo."
California did exactly that, ignoring the man so completely that he abandoned the campaign six months before anyone actually had to vote against him.
But here's where the story graduates from irony into outright parody worthy of a Monty Python skit.
Cloobeck lectured Swalwell about "trust" while dealing with his own criminal headaches. Police arrested the billionaire on a felony warrant alleging that he intimidated and attempted to dissuade a witness. Prosecutors say those actions related to his girlfriend, Adva Lavie, who faces charges alleging she burglarized the homes of men she met through dating apps. Cloobeck posted $300,000 bail on her behalf.
Lavie has pleaded not guilty to every charge. While the case proceeds, authorities have placed her on electronic monitoring, barred her from contacting the alleged victims, and prohibited her from leaving California. Reports indicate those restrictions disrupted plans to marry Cloobeck in Jerusalem. If convicted on every count, she faces up to eleven years and eight months in state prison.
I invite you to pause and appreciate the symmetry. The billionaire who threw Swalwell out for violating trust now faces allegations that he leaned on witnesses while trying to shield someone accused of high-end home burglaries. Hollywood scriptwriters would reject this plot as too ridiculous.
Reality didn't.
So now we have a disgraced former congressman getting evicted by a disgraced reality-TV billionaire while both men attract the attention of law enforcement. California politics once again proves that the line separating the penthouse from the gutter exists only on zoning maps.
Related: Ditch the Candidate, Keep the Crazy Still Isn't Going to Work
As for Swalwell's whereabouts? Honestly, I couldn't tell you. Two days of wading through the web produced nothing on that point.
A television news crew visited the Livermore address listed on his voter registration and found a dark, empty house that perfectly mirrored the condition of his political future. No credible public sighting has surfaced since April 10. That's as close as I've gotten.
Don't mistake that disappearance for surrender, though.
While Swalwell avoids cameras, his campaign manager reportedly spends plenty of time sending cease-and-desist letters to journalists and content creators. Their offense? Talking about the allegations. The candidate vanished. The campaign collapsed. The lawyers, however, apparently still bill by the hour.
Which raises an obvious question: Who's writing those checks?
Meanwhile, California's 14th Congressional District remains without representation. That vacant seat now stands as the most fitting monument imaginable to a politician who climbed to the top, drove straight off the cliff, and found himself under criminal scrutiny — all in what felt like a single news cycle.
I'll leave my crawlers running on the subject and let you know if anything surfaces.
