Legal troubles for Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) continue to mount as a fifth woman came forward on Tuesday with claims of sexual misconduct.
Swalwell has said he is not guilty of the allegations against him, despite criminal and congressional investigations already underway, and has already dropped out of the California gubernatorial race and is in the process of resigning from the US House of Representatives.
Four women have already come forward to claim he sexually abused them, and now a scandal from a decade ago is being revived, again bringing forth accusations
Axios reported back in 2020 that Swalwell had an affair with suspected Chinese operative Christine Fang, and now Article III Project President Mike Davis, an ally of President Donald Trump, is calling for the release of FBI files relating to the "Fang Fang affair."
At a Tuesday news conference in Beverly Hills, California, the fifth woman to accuse Swalwell of sexual misconduct, Lonna Drewes, claimed Swalwell took her to a California hotel room, where he drugged, raped and choked her
Drewes said in a televised press briefing that she had two previous encounters with Swalwell before the hotel incident, but they were both "pleasant."
The third encounter, though, turned dark when, she said, "he drugged my drink."
That caused her to feel as though she couldn't move by the time the two of them reached his hotel room, adding that his physical actions against her were against her will.
“I would never have engaged in a consensual sexual encounter with Eric Swalwell," she said.
Meanwhile, the controversy surrounding the 2020 allegations against Swalwell included news reports that he acknowledged a relationship with Christine Fang, while Fang was working as a fundraiser for him and other Democrats -- but a report in Axios also portrayed Fang as "part of a broader, years-long political intelligence and influence operation run by China’s civilian spy agency that targeted up-and-coming politicians in California and beyond between roughly 2011 and 2015," as Factually put it.
Following an investigation, there were no charges filed against Swalwell or Fang in connection with the Axios report's claims.