The amazing thing about Eric Swalwell is that he keeps finding new ways to embarrass himself.
It’s not enough that the guy has been caught in an alleged relationship with a Chinese spy or that he’s been kicked off the House Intelligence Committee along with inveterate liar Adam Schiff.
But last week he cast himself in a new role as Hunter Biden’s wingman, and embarrassed himself again — by the standards he made public himself only two years ago.
Swalwell has admitted to reserving space for the president’s son’s poor-little-rich-boy news conference Wednesday — a news conference that took place at the same time Biden should have been appearing, under subpoena, before a closed-door hearing of the House Oversight Committee.
Biden stayed safely on the Senate side of the Capitol, out of the jurisdictional reach of the House sergeant at arms, while he blamed Republicans for digging up his past of using his father’s name as a commodity in an influence-peddling scheme that spanned the globe.
The key here is that Swalwell was directly aiding Hunter in defying a House subpoena — something Swalwell himself condemned in a social media post from October 2021 — when it came to a man on the opposite side of Swalwell’s politics.
At the time, Steve Bannon, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump, was battling a House subpoena on the grounds of executive privilege.
“If you or I ignored a lawful subpoena, we’d got to jail,” Swalwell wrote, putting the words in bold, just to press the point.
“So should Steve Bannon.”
If you or I ignored a lawful subpoena, we’d go to jail.
So should Steve Bannon.
The House voted 229-202 – with 9 Republicans voting aye – to hold him in contempt. The Justice Department should act immediately.— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) October 21, 2021
So, by Swalwell’s own standards, Hunter Biden should be in jail — and so, by extension, should Eric Swalwell.
As George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote in a commentary piece published by The Hill on Saturday, Swalwell’s actions with Hunter Biden were even worse than whatever he was up to with Fang Fang the Chinese spy back in 2014-15, when she served not only as his suspected girlfriend but also as a fundraiser for his congressional re-election, according to Forbes.
“This is different. Swalwell was not charged in the Chinese affair, including by the House Ethics Committee,” Turley wrote. “This was a criminal act directed against the House itself.”
While Turley did not try to argue there was an actual crime involved in Swalwell’s action, he made it clear some congressional action was justified.
“In taking these actions, Swalwell encouraged and facilitated the contempt of Congress,” he wrote. “While his conduct may not warrant a criminal charge, it certainly warrants action from the House.”
And Swalwell’s own words against Bannon in 2021 are coming back to haunt him now.
“Well well well. The chickens come home to roost,” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine wrote in a social media post on Saturday. “Bang Bang Swalwell.”
Well well well. The chickens come home to roost, Bang Bang Swalwell https://t.co/iB0Eboiv5E
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) December 16, 2023
She drew plenty of response:
Eric sure likes to apply the double standard as often as possible.
— Croxxed Out (@FLCons) December 16, 2023
“We are Utter Hypocrites” is the Democrat mantra.
— Blame Soros | America Last | Get Used to It (@Jude_62) December 17, 2023
Swalwell makes my skin crawl, there’s something about him…,.
— Donna (@DonnaHa81594512) December 17, 2023
Swalwell, 43, has been in Congress since 2013, representing the 14th Congressional District in the San Francisco Bay Area — one of the few regions in the country leftist enough and shameless enough to keep electing a joker like that to office.
He first caught national attention with his joke of a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019 — an embarrassing mixture of progressive piety and attacks on the Second Amendment that only the left wing could love.
In 2021, he got himself chosen by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as an impeachment manager in the Democrats’ first, deranged attempt to end the Trump presidency.
That was an embarrassment to the country, to its history, and to every individual connected with it, including Eric Swalwell.
Since then, he’s been serially humiliated by by social media fact-checkers, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who told a Newsmax interviewer in 2022 that Swalwell would criticize her on social media, then lack the courage to see her face to face in the halls of Congress.
But now, Swalwell has outdone himself. Weighed down by the baggage of a sex scandal himself, he’s openly associating with Hunter Biden, one of the country’s best-known examples of hideously loose living.
Already suspected of his own foreign … entanglements, he’s allied himself with a president’s son who’s credibly accused of running bag for a family business that brought in millions from foreign entities.
Should Eric Swalwell face criminal charges for this?
Now, with his own documented history of calling for jail for those who defy congressional subpoenas, Swalwell has gone out of his way to aid and abet a man who flagrantly defied a House subpoena while speaking only feet away from where he should have been answering questions under oath.
That’s an embarrassment on a different level entirely — a felony-level embarrassment that Swalwell has, once again, inflicted on himself.
There’s no doubt the Republican Party has its share of controversial, sometimes-embarrassing figures (Boebert herself recently joined their ranks, unfortunately), but if there’s one thing conservatives and Republicans around the country can be grateful for, it’s that they’re not on the same side as the likes of Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff … and Eric Swalwell.
Now, that would be too embarrassing.
