{"id":21306,"date":"2026-04-14T18:02:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T18:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/i-fell-for-it-gallego-gives-emotional-remarks-following-swalwell-sexual-assault-allegations\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T18:02:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T18:02:21","slug":"i-fell-for-it-gallego-gives-emotional-remarks-following-swalwell-sexual-assault-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/i-fell-for-it-gallego-gives-emotional-remarks-following-swalwell-sexual-assault-allegations\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I fell for it:\u2019 Gallego gives emotional remarks following Swalwell sexual assault allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Sen. Ruben Gallego said his former close friend, Rep. Eric Swalwell, \u201cbetrayed\u201d his trust following revelations of sexual assault allegations and denied having any knowledge of the serious accusations lodged against the California Democrat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEric Swalwell lied to all of us \u2014 lied to the most powerful people in this country \u2014 and they trusted him,\u201d Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, told reporters Tuesday afternoon in his office.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI fell for it,\u201d Gallego said, adding that Swalwell \u201cbecame very good at being a predator.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Swalwell, who served with Gallego in the House, has withdrawn his bid for California governor and announced plans he will resign from Congress following multiple sexual misconduct allegations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI let this man into my family \u2026 it hurts me that this man hurt a lot of people,\u201d Gallego, who chaired Swalwell\u2019s 2020 presidential campaign, said in emotional remarks where he at times appeared on the verge of tears.<\/p>\n<p>While Gallego conceded he had long heard rumblings that Swalwell was \u201cflirty,\u201d he insisted he was unaware of the severity of the charges being lodged against Swalwell by former staffers \u2014 including rape.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook, we socialized. We went out. But I never saw him engage in any of the predatory behavior, harassment, sexual assault or even like anything that,\u201d Gallego said. \u201cI\u2019m sorry that we didn\u2019t listen closer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He apologized to the victims of Swalwell\u2019s alleged misconduct and pledged to hand over to the authorities electronic communications he had with Swalwell as part of any legal proceedings. Gallego also said revelations about Swalwell have made him reconsider rumors he&#8217;d heard previously about sexual transgressions involving elected officials in Washington \u2014 and reevaluate occasions where he might have crossed boundaries within his own professional circles.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI definitely look at the world a different way now,\u201d said Gallego. \u201cI certainly am going to make sure that I&#8217;m going to take, you know, personal steps and office steps to make sure that we don&#8217;t even get close to a gray line.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sen. Ruben Gallego said his former close friend, Rep. Eric Swalwell, \u201cbetrayed\u201d his trust following revelations of sexual assault allegations and denied having any knowledge of the serious accusations lodged against the California Democrat. \u201cEric Swalwell lied to all of us \u2014 lied to the most powerful people in this country \u2014 and they trusted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}