House Moves Toward Swalwell Expulsion Vote Over Sexual Assault Allegations

The constitutional mechanism for removing a sitting member of Congress came under direct pressure Saturday when Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida announced plans to force a floor vote to expel Rep. Eric Swalwell of California over sexual assault allegations as early as next week. Within hours, Democratic leadership aides confirmed they would respond in kind by pushing to expel Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, setting up what could become the most consequential institutional confrontation on the House floor in years.

The move elevates unresolved allegations into the domain of Article I expulsion, the most severe penalty the House can impose and one that has historically required a completed Ethics Committee investigation or a criminal conviction before members will seriously contemplate it. Expulsion requires a two-thirds majority vote, a threshold so high that only six members of the House have been expelled in the chamber's entire history. The most recent case was Rep. George Santos in December 2023, removed only after an Ethics Committee report documented extensive fraud. Neither Swalwell nor Gonzales has reached that stage.

The allegations against Swalwell emerged from a San Francisco Chronicle report in which a former staffer, who was not publicly named, alleged he sexually assaulted her on two occasions when she was too intoxicated to consent. She told the Chronicle she worked for him in 2019, when she was 21. CNN subsequently reported that four women in total had come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. Swalwell's attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter to the original accuser. "These allegations of sexual assault are flat false. They are absolutely false. They did not happen, they never happened," Swalwell said in a video posted to social media.

The allegations arrived as Swalwell was running as a leading candidate for California governor. Senior aides abruptly resigned and key endorsements collapsed after the Chronicle's report. Two California Democrats, Reps. Jared Huffman and Sam Liccardo, called for him to resign from Congress entirely. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office also opened an investigation after one woman alleged the incident occurred in New York.

The Democratic counter-move against Gonzales sharpens the institutional dilemma. Gonzales ended his reelection bid in March after being pushed into a primary runoff and acknowledged an extramarital affair with a married aide who died by suicide in September 2025. His case remains open before the House Ethics Committee. Luna, in announcing her motion, said it was "unacceptable" for members to remain in the House while facing such allegations.

Democratic leadership aides warned that successful expulsion votes under these circumstances could trigger a chain reaction: both parties reaching for expulsion resolutions at the first sign of a damaging allegation rather than waiting for ethics findings or criminal proceedings to run their course, converting a constitutional remedy of last resort into a routine partisan instrument.

The two-thirds threshold makes both votes unlikely to succeed in the current closely divided chamber. But a failed vote is not a clean outcome. Every member who votes against expulsion faces questions about shielding an accused colleague; every member who votes for it risks being seen as endorsing removal without due process. Santos himself warned during his own expulsion proceedings that "mere allegations" as grounds for removal would "haunt" the House in the future. That warning is about to be tested in both directions simultaneously.