David’s view
Ruben Gallego’s friends told him to, “lay low,” as he put it, “and this will pass over.” He didn’t agree.
The Arizona Democratic senator was right about one thing: This month’s sexual assault allegations against Eric Swalwell, Gallego’s onetime “best friend,” didn’t just destroy the Californian’s political career. They also subjected Gallego to the first stress test of the party’s invisible 2028 presidential primary, which is already underway.
Which makes Gallego’s handling of the Swalwell disaster all the more remarkable. He held a 35-minute clear-the-air presser and spoke at length with me recently about the ad hoc war room he developed as the Swalwell crisis grew. He was confident that a rummage through his life, the kind presidential campaigns inevitably prompt, would not turn up stories of misconduct.
“I could see early on that this was no longer about Eric Swalwell,” Gallego told me. “It was about targeting me. When you have Chris LaCivita tweeting it, and then Karoline Leavitt talking about me from the White House podium, that’s when I came to that realization.”
He told me that, with “100%” certainty, he’d never gotten so intoxicated that he did something he couldn’t remember. He acknowledged a “reputation” for late nights and drinking, “before having kids,” that he now felt was being used against him — particularly in a NOTUS story about him inviting embassy staff to join him “partying” past midnight on an official trip to Colombia.
“I will not expose myself to anything of this nature whatsoever with any embassy staff anymore,” he said. “It’s unfortunate. I’m just not going to risk it.”
Perhaps the only question Gallego pushed off, at his April 14 press conference, and in our interview, was a big one: whether his credulous friendship with Swalwell made him less likely to run for president. The Swalwell crisis moved from questions about how the senator could be so trusting of his friend to follow-ups about whether he, too, was hiding something.
Gallego was not implicated by any of the multiple women who came forward against Swalwell, but his press conference didn’t fully quiet the scrutiny he got — particularly after admitting then that he’d heard “rumors” the former House member was “flirty.”
He told me he was frustrated by the commentary about his decision, especially theories about his body language. Commentators who didn’t believe his answers homed in on his folded arms and quick “no” when asked if he’d behaved like Swalwell.
“My team hates this, but folding arms is a very common thing in the Marines, right? Especially when you’re mad,” he said. “You fold your arms to show the seriousness and gravity of the situation, and also because you don’t want to be waving your hands and choking somebody if they ask a very sick, insulting question.”
Despite the mixed results from his press conference, Gallego told me he saw the negative coverage he faced as amplified by his political rivals. He said he’d urged colleagues to adopt his approach of specifically refuting any charge thrown his way.
“They’re going to do this to every Democrat going forward, especially if you’re running statewide, or if you’re running for president,” he said. “What they’re doing to me is what they’re going to do to everybody, because it works.”
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This month wasn’t Gallego’s first experience with vague allegations of personal misbehavior. His 2024 GOP opponent, Kari Lake, pushed for the release of divorce records from his first marriage to Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, though the papers ultimately showed nothing beyond standard rationales for ending the union.
What made the post-Swalwell climate different: Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla.
Gallego learned she was asking the Senate for an ethics probe of him two days after his lengthy press conference, when Luna said so on CBS News. She claimed that “a woman that allegedly is coming forward with attorneys” would accuse him of something “sexual in nature.” (That public claim has yet to emerge.)
“Luna goes on CBS and starts just f*cking lying,” Gallego told me. “And CBS just runs with it, without even giving us an opportunity to respond. They just blew up something that went from an online bullsh*t story from known liar George Santos, and now we’re playing defense on something that never f*cking happened at all.”
Luna gave what she had directly to Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s office, which ultimately passed it on to the Ethics Committee. And Gallego took the same approach he had all month, trying to directly head off the negative headline.
He called the leaders of the Senate ethics panel; they told him that he could “ask in writing” to expedite the investigation, which he did, and he met personally with Ethics staff the next day.
“Our indication is that one of the ethics complaints she filed is already debunked,” Gallego said, referring to a story about a hotel payment made during his wedding. “The second one is a George Santos tweet that we fired a staffer because she withstood my advances. We know that’s actually not true, because I have a great relationship with my staff. The last one is more along the lines of: Did I somehow know about Eric [Swalwell]’s sexual assaults?”
There’s a collective muscle memory of #MeToo, and how a politician accused of sexual misconduct might be abandoned while he mounts a defense. That script hasn’t played out for Gallego so far, though Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs sidestepped a question about whether she trusted his Swalwell story.
One #MeToo activist I talked to chalked it up to the movement’s focus on elevating survivors — who, despite Luna’s charges, have not directed clear allegations toward Gallego. What Luna has cited, like a previously reported story of Gallego wiping earwax on a GOP staffer, isn’t visibly rattling his colleagues.
“How responsible is he for somebody else?” said Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who accepted Gallego’s statement that he did not know what Swalwell was doing. To him, Luna was not a “credible” source.
Room for Disagreement
David Leatherwood, a spokesman for Luna, said that the congresswoman “has turned over any and all materials provided to us by alleged victims and/or informants to Leader Thune’s office who has looped in Senate Ethics who has now opened an investigation into the case.”
Asked about Gallego’s dismissive response to him and his allegations, Santos told Semafor: “I’m not the one that was BFFs with disgraced Eric Swalwell, who is now known to be a massive whore. Gallego should focus on his own mess and not point fingers at me.”
Notable
- Before the Swalwell implosion was complete, Gallego talked with Vox’s Astead Herndon about his rising profile and his regrets about the Californian.