California gubernatorial candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., is facing backlash on social media after it was reported that his lawyer was sending cease-and-desist letters to Swalwell’s accusers a day before multiple bombshell allegations were published on Friday.

Swalwell, who once called on lawmakers to hear out women raising allegations against Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh during his 2018 confirmation hearings and said they “deserve to be heard,” is now being slammed for hypocrisy.

“I saw continued demeaning of victims of sexual assault, people who deserve to be heard, people who deserve their allegations to be investigated and a president who wants to rush this through,” Swalwell said in an interview with MSNBC at the time.

“And so, for Brett Kavanaugh’s sake, if he is innocent, I hope tomorrow he opens his statement and says, ‘You know what? Bring in all the victims, all of them to be questioned.’ That will clear his name if he is indeed innocent,” Swalwell added.

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California gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell waves before speaking at the 2026 California Democratic Party State Convention in San Francisco, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The resurfaced clip comes as Swalwell has made efforts to downplay allegations against him as he leads a crowded field of gubernatorial hopefuls in a race to replace outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is prevented by term limits from remaining in the role.

Jonathan Turley, a Fox News contributor and Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, took to X on Friday, saying Swalwell is “hoping that voters will apply a different standard than the one he applied to Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation.”

“When Kavanaugh was asserting his innocence, Swalwell was leading the mob,” Turley continued.

Mike Davis, the former chief counsel for nominations in the Senate Judiciary Committee, posted “Receipt time” on X while resurfacing an old Swalwell post attacking Kavanaugh.

“Oh, how I remember this hypocritical predator peddling these utterly bullsh– allegations against Kavanaugh,” Davis said in another post.

Rumblings of sexual misconduct from Swalwell first emerged last month when Cheyenne Hunt, a former Capitol Hill staffer and a progressive political media personality, began circulating testimony from women who said they had been sexually assaulted by the congressman.

Swalwell’s lawyer, Elias Dabaie, reportedly sent out cease-and-desist letters to try to quell the rumors Thursday, but multiple outlets, including CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle, published bombshell reports Friday, which Swalwell later denied in a video he posted late Friday night on X.

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Democratic United States Representative Eric Swalwell delivers a speech as he attends the SEIU-United Service Workers West (SEIU-USWW)’s Gubernatorial Candidate Worker Forum at Meruelo Studios in Los Angeles, California, on January 10, 2026. = (Etienne Laurent/AFP)

One of the alleged victims shared her story publicly for the first time, accusing Swalwell of taking advantage of her while she was intoxicated on multiple occasions, according to a report published by the San Francisco Chronicle. 

The alleged victim’s story also included claims that Swalwell pressured her to send naked pictures of herself and sent sexually explicit photos of his own, pulled out his private parts while driving in a car with her and requested she perform oral sex on him, among other incidents the victim said affected how Swalwell treated her professionally.

The unnamed female accuser reportedly worked for Swalwell for about two years and revealed that he started pursuing her, despite being married, shortly after she was hired as a 21-year-old staffer in his district office.  

She also reportedly revealed that years after she worked for Swalwell, she attended an April 2024 charity event Swalwell was being honored at and reunited with him. In her account of the night, which included grabbing drinks with him after the event and later blacking out, she alleged that she remembered pushing Swalwell away and told him “no” as he allegedly tried to force her to have sex with him in his hotel room. 

The woman reportedly texted a friend after the incident telling her she had been sexually assaulted by Swalwell. Other messages reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle reportedly showed the victim indicating she had “blacked out” but “woke up once during it and even told him to stop at one point.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) speaks during a House Judiciary Committee hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel in the Rayburn House Office Building on Sept. 17, 2025.  (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

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After the allegations went viral and top Democrats called for him to drop out of the California gubernatorial race, Swalwell said in a video message on X that the “sexual assault allegations are flat false. They are absolutely false. They did not happen. They have never happened and I will fight them with everything that I have.”

“I’ve certainly made mistakes in judgment in my past, but those mistakes are between me and my wife and to her- I apologize deeply for putting her in this position,” Swalwell continued.

“This false, outrageous rumor is being spread 27 days before an election begins by flailing opponents who have sadly teamed up with MAGA conspiracy theorists because they know Eric Swalwell is the frontrunner in this race,” Micah Beasley, a spokesperson for Swalwell, said earlier this week.

Swalwell’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A House Democrat running for re-election in a battleground district previously said his home state was “stolen land” and claimed racism was “embedded” into nearly everything, according to a resurfaced video reviewed by Fox News Digital. 

“We are on stolen land,” Rep. Gabe Vasquez, N.M., said in 2020 before entering Congress during an interview with a New Mexico-based outlet. He added the land used to be Mexican territory and before that was inhabited by Native Americans.

“Just about every part of life that we experience has some racism embedded into it,” Vasquez continued. “I have become less optimistic about where this country stands in terms of being able to eradicate racism, because it is intergenerational. It is passed on. It is embedded into our system.”

Vasquez, who is seeking a third term in November, made the remarks while serving as a city councilmember of Las Cruces — the largest city in his southwestern New Mexico district. He entered Congress in January 2023 after defeating a Republican incumbent while positioning himself as a moderate.

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Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., conducts a news conference with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), during the House Democrats 2025 Issues Conference at the Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, Va., on Thursday, March 13, 2025. Chair Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., left, Reps. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, and Darren Soto, D-Fla., also appear. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)

Vasquez also suggested that he was open to replacing some of the city’s police officers with licensed psychologists and clinicians to respond to certain events during the interview. 

“Those are the types of things that I’m committed to supporting, where if we do have to take budget away from a specific department, whether you know, it be police or otherwise,” Vasquez said, adding that he believed it was unnecessary with the current budget.

“If we don’t need those positions anymore, if we don’t need those budget line items anymore, then we need to get rid of them,” he continued. “And that’s a decision I’m happy to try to champion at the city council.”

Vasquez in 2020 appeared to justify rioting following the death of George Floyd, CNN’s KFile first reported. He also voiced support for the defund the police movement while using a pseudonym during an interview with a local outlet at a Black Lives Matter protest that year.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) said Vasquez has been an unequivocal supporter of law enforcement during his House tenure in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

“Rep. Vasquez has supported increased funding for law enforcement for his entire political career, including over $4 billion for state and local police as Congressman just this year,” DCCC spokesperson Anna Elsasser said.

The New Mexico Democrat has joined the majority of House Democrats in refusing to fund federal immigration enforcement absent reforms, including the tightening of warrant requirements and prohibiting officers from wearing masks.

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Defund the police activists flooding the streets of Brooklyn, New York, in the summer of 2020. (Getty Images)

The Republican National Committee sharply criticized Vasquez’s prior comments in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

“Gabe Vasquez is a truly sick individual who may have a terminal case of the woke mind virus,” RNC spokesman Zach Kraft said in a statement. “He should get the help he needs to realize how insane it is to call every single American racist, and he should be nowhere near Congress.” 

Vasquez is a top target of national Republicans, who are mounting a second attempt to unseat him after he improved his performance in 2024 despite Trump carrying the district.

Representative Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat from New Mexico, during a tour of CN Wire Corporation in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024. Vasquez, a Democrat currently serving New Mexico’s second Congressional district, is running for re-election against former Republican Representative Yvette Herrell, who served the district from 2021 to 2023. (Justin Hamel/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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The nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted the race from “toss-up” to “lean Democrat” in January, citing President Donald Trump’s declining job approval and Democrats’ strong electoral performance in 2025. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Vasquez’s campaign for comment.