Eric Swalwell campaign paid hotel where accuser Lonna Drewes claims assault took place
Eric Swalwell, the former Democratic presidential hopeful who resigned from Congress and quit the California governor's race this week amid a storm of allegations ranging from sexual misconduct to rape, spent campaign money at a Hollywood hotel where a former model claims he sexually assaulted her.
Swalwell's 2018 re-election campaign made two payments at the Montrose hotel at 900 Hammond Street on July 18, 2018, according to finance records first publicized on X by a campaign finance expert named Rob Pyers. They were for $353 and $8.
That's the same address Los Angeles deputies revealed Tuesday after speaking with Swalwell's latest accuser, Lonna Drewes, who claims to have been victimized in July 2018. Swalwell has denied the allegations coming from her and several other women.
An additional review of Swalwell's expenditures by Fox News Digital revealed a $43.24 Lyft ride in California on that day. The filing does not show who took it or include more specifics about the ride.
Now the disgraced ex-congressman faces legal probes on both coasts, according to authorities in New York and Los Angeles.
FBI Director Kash Patel challenged the former lawmaker to come in for an interview and encouraged any potential witnesses or victims to call the bureau's tip line in an X post. And the House Ethics Committee announced Monday its own probe into allegations of sexual misconduct.
While initially the allegations stemming from a 2024 encounter with a former staffer after a New York City gala seemed most likely to lead to charges, new evidence is emerging in California that appears to at least partially corroborate another accuser's story, according to Donna Rotunno, a Chicago-based trial attorney and Fox News contributor.
"She seems fairly legitimate to me," she said of Swalwell's unnamed New York accuser. "There was outcry. She went to the hospital. She seems to have some evidence to back up her story."
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Outcry is when a victim reports a sexual assault incident to someone else, like friends or family, rather than police. Testimony from witnesses on the receiving end of these conversations is allowed in court under certain conditions, Rotunno said. It's an exception to hearsay rules.
And the New York accuser also got tested for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, for which she has medical records.
"She at least comes across as somebody who can back it up," said Rotunno, who is an expert defense lawyer in sex assault cases. "Now it's for somebody else to determine whether or not they think that it’s a crime."
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If Manhattan investigators decide to file charges, she said they can expect a vigorous defense from Swalwell's legal team.
"Would he have known if she's too intoxicated to consent?" she posited. "Just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean you don’t consent."
Drunken drivers consented to get behind the wheel before committing those crimes, she said. Drunken Uber riders consent to pay the bill and get home safely.
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"Any jury can put themselves in that person's position," she said. "Drunk people have sex all the time. It’s a very nuanced area of law."
After the New York accuser went public with her allegations in a San Francisco Chronicle interview published Friday, other women came forward with allegations of misconduct or worse.
One of them was Drewes, who told Los Angeles deputies Tuesday that Swalwell allegedly sexually assaulted her at a West Hollywood hotel in July 2018, located on the 900 block of Hammond Street — the address of the Montrose hotel where Swalwell's campaign made two payments on July 18, 2018.
"It corroborates... that she was there," Rotunno said. "Now he would have to say it was consensual rather than it didn’t happen at all."
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"We were supposed to go to a political event, and he said he needed to get paperwork from his hotel room," Drewes, a former model and software entrepreneur, said during a news briefing alongside her attorneys Lisa Bloom and Arick Fudali Tuesday.
She said she was already "incapacitated" by the time they got to his room.
"He raped me," she alleged. "And he choked me. And while he was choking me, I lost consciousness. And I thought I died. I did not consent to any sexual activity."
The allegations are similar to those in the Chronicle piece, from a former staffer accusing him of sexually assaulting her when she was blackout drunk after the New York City gala on April 25, 2024.
According to the report, she claimed to remember only "snippets of the night," including telling Swalwell "no." Three days later, she reportedly told a friend she believed she was sexually assaulted.
"As a lawyer who has dealt with Harvey Weinstein for now a little less than a decade, I would be very upset if they were not equally treating these people fairly," Rotunno told Fox News Digital. "This allegation in New York is identical to the allegation on Harvey, without the alcohol. The alcohol makes it even worse."
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In New York City, Manhattan prosecutors are also asking for additional witnesses or victims to call them.
"We urge survivors and anyone with knowledge of these allegations to contact our Special Victims Division at 212-335-9373," a spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney's office told Fox News over the weekend. "Our specially trained prosecutors, investigators, and counselors are well-equipped to help you in a trauma-informed, survivor-centered manner."
After the Chronicle report, other women came forward with allegations, including Drewes, who said at a news conference in Beverly Hills Tuesday that she believes Swalwell drugged and raped her at a hotel in 2018.
Swalwell has denied the allegations, but he quit the governor's race.
"I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made," he wrote on X Sunday. "But that's my fight, not a campaign's."
He later resigned from Congress.
Fox News' Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
