Last month, there were signs that Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) might be the next domino to fall after sexual misconduct allegations took down Eric Swalwell. It looks like Gallego is taking the allegations seriously; he has quietly established a formal legal defense fund to cover the costs of fighting misconduct allegations now before the Senate Ethics Committee, according to a report from NBC News.
For a guy who insists he's done nothing wrong, that's a curious move.
“Senator Gallego is under attack from right-wing conspiracy theorists like Anna Paulina Luna, the Trump Administration, and their cronies. This White House has made clear it is their priority to abuse their power and target political enemies. Senator Gallego will not stand for it,” Gallego spokesperson Jacques Petit said in a statement.
That's a standard line, but it doesn't explain why the senator's team then went and filed paperwork with the IRS to create an entity called the "Senator Ruben Gallego Legal Defense Fund."
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The fund is purpose-built: it exists to raise and spend money on legal and related expenses tied specifically to the ethics matter. Gallego's office says the decision to create it flows directly from Luna's complaint and the resulting inquiry. That's an interesting admission for a team that, in the same breath, insists that there are "no details or evidence" behind the accusations.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) went public with allegations, which she says came directly from a woman who witnessed or experienced an incident with Gallego.
"Without, I guess, getting too graphic, there is a woman that allegedly is coming forward with attorneys, wants to go on record about an incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time, and the event was sexual in nature, allegedly,” Luna told CBS News’ Major Garrett last month.
She also flagged what she called "apparently issues of campaign finance violations" and forwarded the full package to Senate Republican Leader John Thune's office. A spokesperson for Thune confirmed that Luna's office did reach out and that the material was passed along to Senate Ethics.
Even more bizarre is that Gallego said the Ethics Committee of any inquiry had not formally notified him. Yet he proactively reached out to Ethics staff to schedule a meeting and signal his willingness to cooperate. He's also told reporters he's "fully complying" with a process he technically hasn't been officially looped into yet. Setting up a legal defense fund, reaching out to an ethics committee that you claim hasn't even contacted you, and announcing your full cooperation all at once is a strange way to treat allegations you've dismissed as fringe conspiracy theories.
For years, Swalwell’s predatory behavior was an open secret in Washington. He and Gallego were best buds. And then there’s Gallego’s own record. In 2009, the Arizona Republic reported that Gallego, then a top aide to a Phoenix city councilman, verbally harassed a female intern, berating and intimidating her in front of her co-workers. He also divorced his pregnant wife, sealed the court records, and then married a younger woman. Does that sound like an upstanding guy?
Now he's doing everything someone does when they're worried about what's coming. Innocent people don't usually build the infrastructure of a legal defense before the investigation has even formally begun.
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