Let’s talk about the Eric Swalwell situation, because it is, as they say in the legal profession, a whole thing.
For the unfamiliar: Swalwell — a California congressman, former presidential candidate, fellow attorney, and cable news fixture who made a cottage industry out of Trump opposition — resigned from Congress and abandoned his California gubernatorial campaign after the bottom fell out spectacularly. A CNN investigation published April 10 featured four women describing sexual misconduct by the representative, including a former staffer who says he raped her while she was heavily intoxicated, leaving her bruised and bleeding. That former staffer, who had worked for Swalwell since she was 20 years old, said it was actually the second time he had nonconsensual sexual contact with her while she was drunk, the first occurring back in 2019 when she was still on his staff. Two other women alleged that Swalwell sent them unsolicited explicit messages and nude photos after connecting with them online over their shared interest in Democratic politics. The allegations describe a consistent pattern: Swalwell, the married father of three, targeted women in their twenties who were finding their professional footing, making them feel special before escalating to alleged unwanted physical contact, often tied to heavy drinking.
Swalwell denied everything, calling the allegations “false” and claiming they came from political opponents trying to kneecap the frontrunner in the governor’s race, and had his attorneys fire off cease-and-desist letters to two of the accusers within days of CNN first seeking comment. Neither the denials nor the legal threats did much to stop the bleeding. He dropped his gubernatorial campaign (on April 12) and then, on April 14, resigned from Congress entirely. That’s the backdrop. Now here’s the Biglaw angle, and yes, there is very much a Biglaw angle.
Attorneys at some of the most recognizable names in the Am Law 100 had opened their wallets for Swalwell in a big way. Donors from DLA Piper, Kirkland & Ellis, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, White & Case, Paul Hastings, Morrison & Foerster, and others had contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Democrat as he championed himself as a rule-of-law crusader and Trump antagonist. For a certain stripe of Biglaw lawyer, Swalwell was catnip — a prosecutor-turned-congressman who spoke their language.
Now those same donors are doing what one might call a reevaluation.
Neal Manne, a Susman Godfrey partner in Houston who made a $5,000 contribution to Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign last fall, told Law.com he was caught off guard by the allegations. “I was very surprised and disappointed,” Manne said. “It seems like he did the right thing in terminating his gubernatorial campaign and resigning from Congress.” Manne contextualized his support the way many donors do when the person they backed turns out to be, well, this: “[Swalwell] had been active in the House impeachment of President Trump [and] spoke in support of the rule of law, which is something that is important to me as a lawyer, and so I have made a political contribution to him as I have hundreds of other candidates.” Swalwell is, apparently, just one of them.
Manne wasn’t the only Susman Godfrey partner caught in this particular dragnet; partners Bill Carmody, Shawn Rabin, and Stephen Shackelford also contributed thousands to Swalwell’s now-defunct gubernatorial run.
Kristina Lawson, managing partner at Hanson Bridgett in San Francisco, made two separate $5,000 contributions to the campaign and issued a statement that left little ambiguity about where she stands now, “I take these allegations extremely seriously and stand with victims of sexual assault and misconduct. I deeply regret my past support.”
That’s the kind of clean, unequivocal statement crisis PR professionals dream of. Good for her.
But there’s at least one Biglaw contribution that’s more problematic.
The DLA Piper political action committee, according to reporting by Law.com, made a $5,000 contribution to the Eric Swalwell for Governor 2026 campaign on April 13 — that’s one day before Swalwell resigned from the House of Representatives and one day after his gubernatorial campaign was suspended. And the CNN investigation dropping the sexual misconduct allegations — including an account of rape from a former staffer — published on April 10. That’s four days before Swalwell resigned, and three days before DLA Piper’s PAC cut that check.
Read that again slowly: the allegations were public. The CNN investigation was out. And then the contribution went through anyway.
William Minor, the managing partner of DLA Piper’s Washington, D.C., office and treasurer of the DLA Piper PAC, has not yet commented.
Look, the donors who gave before April 10 have a ready-made defense: they didn’t know. Swalwell was, by Biglaw’s political calculus, an attractive candidate; an attorney who invoked the rule of law, opposed Trump loudly and often, and had a plausible path to the California governor’s mansion. Manne’s “I’ve given to hundreds of people” framing is, frankly, a pretty honest account of how large-firm political giving works. You write checks, sometimes they cash awkwardly.
But the DLA Piper PAC contribution has a different problem. The information was already out there. That’s not a matter of not knowing — that’s a matter of, at minimum, not paying attention. And for a firm that would like to be seen as taking issues of sexual misconduct seriously (as every major law firm claims to), the optics are, to put it diplomatically, not great.
The women who came forward described a pattern of sexual misconduct by Swalwell. One former staffer described years of carrying what happened to her in silence. “I’ve always lived with a huge secret,” she told CNN. “The only person who could ruin Eric Swalwell is Eric Swalwell.”
Those women deserve to have their accounts treated seriously. The Biglaw donors who gave in good faith before the allegations surfaced deserve some measure of understanding. And the DLA Piper PAC deserves some pointed questions about its due diligence process.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
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