House could move to expel Swalwell amid sexual assault allegations

The House could move within days to consider expelling Representative Eric Swalwell of California, turning sexual assault allegations into a test of one of Congress’s most extreme punishments. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, is pushing the move, and the stakes now extend well beyond one lawmaker’s fate.

Under Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution, expelling a member requires a two-thirds vote of the House. That bar is deliberately high, and the historical record shows why: a Congressional Research Service review says just 20 members of Congress have ever been expelled, five from the House and 15 from the Senate. Most of those removals came at the outset of the Civil War over disloyalty, while the more recent cases followed public corruption convictions.

The most recent House expulsion came on December 1, 2023, when lawmakers voted 311-114, with 2 present, to remove Representative George Santos. That vote easily cleared the constitutional threshold and is already serving as the modern benchmark for lawmakers considering whether expulsion can be used against Swalwell on allegations alone, rather than on a conviction or a completed ethics finding.

That distinction matters because the House has other discipline tools. The House Committee on Ethics can recommend expulsion, censure or reprimand, and the House Office of Congressional Conduct, renamed in the 2025 rules package, can review allegations and refer matters to the ethics panel. Censure and reprimand carry formal condemnation and reputational damage, but they stop short of forcing a member out of office. Expulsion is a removal vote, and once one party normalizes it for allegations rather than final adjudications, the risk of reciprocal action rises sharply.

The pressure around Swalwell intensified after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said Saturday it was investigating a sexual assault allegation involving him that had been reported by CNN. Reuters reported accusations involving at least four former female staffers, and Swalwell denied the allegations, calling them false. Luna’s push also matters procedurally because House rules allow privileged questions to jump ahead of the regular order, giving members a faster route to a floor fight.

If the House takes up Swalwell, the precedent could outlast the case itself. One removal vote could encourage tit-for-tat attempts, reshape how members think about discipline, and make committee power, party retaliation and floor procedure central weapons in House governance.