California Democrat Eric Swalwell’s troubles deepened on Sunday as the US Department of Homeland Security announced an investigation into allegations the US representative hired “a Brazilian national as a nanny without lawful work authorization”.
Swalwell has been facing a raft of calls to end his campaign for California governor and resign his seat in Congress since Friday, when the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN reported that four women have accused him of sexual misconduct and assault. Swalwell called the claims “false”.
The sexual assault allegation against Swalwell, alleged to have taken place in New York in 2024, prompted the Manhattan district attorney’s office to open a criminal investigation on Saturday. Members of Congress from both parties said on Sunday that they could vote to expel Swalwell, as well as a Republican US representative, Tony Gonzales, also accused of sexual misconduct.
The claim that Swalwell and his wife might have violated immigration law by employing a Brazilian woman who did not have a work permit to care for their children was detailed in a 68-page complaint filed with federal immigration officials in February by Joel Gilbert, a California filmmaker who calls himself “the conservative Michael Moore”.
Gilbert, who mailed a conspiratorial documentary about Barack Obama to voters in swing states before the 2012 election, and has made films attacking Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and others celebrating Donald Trump, denied that he is a Republican political operative. “I just kind of follow the truth where I see it,” he said in an interview.
Gilbert’s work, however, has a clear partisan aim, and he was accused of violating campaign finance law in 2012 in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission that cast his direct-mailed documentary, Dreams from My Real Father, as a kind of campaign contribution meant to aid Mitt Romney. The film promoted the baseless conspiracy theory that Barack Obama had lied to conceal that his father was not Barack Obama Sr, but Frank Marshall Davis, a communist activist, and that his mother, Ann Dunham, had posed for pornographic images taken by Davis.
With the help of the prominent conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, Gilbert fended off the FEC complaint by convincing the three Republican commissioners on the six-person panel that his Obama film was a form of permissible journalism, not subject to donor disclosure, which led to a 3-3 split decision.
Mitchell is such a force in rightwing legal circles that she took part in Donald Trump’s infamous call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, after the 2020 election, when the president asked local officials to “find” him enough votes to change the state’s presidential results.
Gilbert, who is not a lawyer, said that Mitchell did not help him with the complaint against Swalwell.
The New York Times reported in late 2012 that a group of well-financed conservative activists had asked the Republican pollster Frank Luntz to screen Gilbert’s anti-Obama film, and another by Steve Bannon, for focus groups, to test which one would tarnish the then president more. Bannon’s film, produced by conservative advocacy group Citizens United, tested best and was broadcast on cable TV before an Obama-Romney debate.
“Focus groups were revolted by ‘Dreams From My Real Father,’ with its conspiracy theory paranoia and dubious evidence,” the Times reported; their findings did not surprise Luntz’s clients. Their thinking, Luntz told the Times, was: “I want to know if it’s as bad as I think it is.”
The conservative filmmaker – whose deep dive into the public records and social media profiles of the Swalwells and their nanny also led him to file separate complaints with the Federal Election Commission in February and the labor department last week – did acknowledge that the targets of his investigations are all people Trump defines as enemies, and that his research has earned him invitations to discuss his claims to Infowars and the radio show of Roger Stone, the veteran Trump adviser.
Gilbert said he frequently writes for the conspiratorial website the Gateway Pundit and his recent investigations led him to scour the mortgage records of the Swalwells, as well as Letitia James, Jerome Powell, Chuck Schumer and Maxine Waters.
Gilbert took credit for inspiring the criminal referral filed last year against Swalwell for alleged mortgage and tax fraud from Bill Pulte, the openly partisan head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who is known as “Little Trump” in Republican circles.
