‘I Trusted Him’: Eric Swalwell Accuser Speaks Out on CNN

One of the women who accused Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) of sexual misconduct told CNN she was an “admirer” of the lawmaker and believed he was a “great politician” when she first met him — only for Swalwell to shatter her faith in him by repeatedly crossing the line, including by sending an unsolicited picture of his genitals to her.

Ally Sammarco spoke to CNN’s Pamela Brown in an exclusive interview on Tuesday morning. The interview aired the morning after Swalwell announced he was resigning from Congress over multiple accusations of sexual misconduct — including one woman who accused him of raping her twice — that were made against him last week. Swalwell also announced he was ditching his campaign to become California’s next governor.

Sammarco told Brown she reached out to Swalwell on Twitter in 2021 and was thrilled he actually responded to her.

“He was a national politician who at one point even ran for president. And I was someone just starting in my career,” Sammarco explained. “I didn’t think that this was someone who would put themselves out there in a way that could be exposed. So I trusted him, I trusted that even though he’s saying something that feels a little off, that he knows what he’s doing.”

But she said that trust was wrecked by Swalwell’s pattern of inappropriate behavior. Sammarco said she met with Swalwell alone for 20 minutes in his Washington, D.C. office after they connected on Twitter. Following their meeting, the lawmaker sent her a text that read, “could you feel the tension in the room between us?”

Sammarco said things escalated from there.

“The messages shifted to much more personal, much more inappropriate, and crossing a line,” she said.

She showed CNN a text message where Swalwell called her the “bad angel temping me,” and he then asked to communicate with her on Snapchat. Sammarco said the conversations “gradually became more inappropriate” on the disappearing messaging app, and at one point he sent her a picture of his genitals out of the blue.

“Unsolicited?” Brown asked.

“Unsolicited, yeah,” Sammarco said. “And I thought he could help me. I felt like, again, I had just made a huge connection who was interested in helping me. And if I were to push him away in any way, he might not — he might just stop talking to me altogether.”

Swalwell has denied wrongdoing.

Sammarco’s appearance on CNN comes after she and several other women accused him of sexual misconduct in a CNN report last week. A former staffer also accused him of rape in a report from the The San Francisco Chronicle on April 10.

“Because Eric Swalwell ran for governor, that doesn’t mean he’s immune from the consequences of his actions,” Sammarco said at the end of her interview. “He never should have ran for governor to begin with, knowing what he knows, and nobody else is responsible for what happened to him. Eric Swalwell is responsible for Eric Swalwell — not the media, and definitely not the women.”

Watch above via CNN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!