Influencer Behind Swalwell Allegations Has Ties to Rival Katie Porter

The woman amplifying unverified sexual misconduct allegations against Rep. Eric Swalwell shares an academic connection with one of his chief rivals in the California governor's race: Cheyenne Hunt attended UC Irvine School of Law, where Katie Porter was a professor at least during Hunt's first semester. Porter's campaign pushed back on any suggestion of coordination, stating she and Hunt "don't have a relationship to speak of."

Hunt, a Laguna Hills-based attorney and executive director of the progressive advocacy group Gen-Z for Change, posted on X on April 7 that she is "working with a number of women who are in the process of coming forward and sharing their stories of sexual harassment and even alleged abuse at the hands of Eric Swalwell." She also said some women felt pressured into silence by nondisclosure agreements.

The allegations predated Hunt's post. TikTok influencer Arielle Fodor, known as "Mrs. Frazzled" and a former social media surrogate for Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign, said she had been warned about Swalwell the previous November and that "no less than a dozen people" had shared accounts of inappropriate relationships with young staffers, interns, and campaign workers. Hunt's X post and a same-day report in The Daily Caller accelerated the story's reach. Bhavik Lathia, Battleground Mobilization Director for Harris' 2024 campaign, also publicly amplified the claims, as did Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and veteran Democratic campaign advisor Bri Gillis, who once interned for Sen. Chuck Schumer and wrote that "anyone who has been in DC for five minutes knows this."

Swalwell denied the allegations after a campaign event in Sacramento. "There has never been an allegation and there has never been a settlement," he said. His communications director, Micah Beasley, called the story a "false, outrageous rumor" being spread by "flailing opponents who have sadly teamed up with MAGA conspiracy theorists," and stated that in 13 years no one in Swalwell's congressional office had ever been asked to sign an NDA and no ethics complaint had ever been filed against him.

Porter addressed the claims on CNN on April 8, calling the allegations "very, very troubling" and adding: "I believe women. I think that has to be the starting place here." She said she had not spoken to any of the women whom influencers say plan to come forward, and separately continued attacking Swalwell on the campaign trail over his vote for a resolution expressing gratitude to law enforcement including ICE.

The allegations landed with fewer than two months until California's June 2 primary, with mail-in ballots set to go out no later than May 4. Under the state's top-two system, only the top two finishers across all parties advance. Recent public polls show Swalwell in a statistical tie with Porter and Tom Steyer at roughly 13 percent each, even as an internal California Democratic Party survey shows him leading the field.

Hunt acknowledged the political stakes plainly: "I am not blind to the fact that this will obviously have implications in the CA governor's race." The claims add to a cluster of complications circling Swalwell's campaign: separate reporting questions his California residency, with accounts placing him at luxury hotels and the Beverly Hills mansion of billionaire Democratic donor Stephen Cloobeck while he claims a rented room in Livermore where neighbors reportedly did not recognize him. FBI Director Kash Patel was also reportedly pushing as recently as March 2026 to release case files from the House Ethics Committee's since-closed investigation into Swalwell's ties to Christine Fang, a suspected Chinese intelligence operative; that probe ended in 2023 without any finding of wrongdoing.

Dan Schnur, a political communications professor at both USC and UC Berkeley, assessed the damage cautiously: "If Swalwell's denials hold up, it should only be a short-term distraction." But the speed with which unverified claims traveled from progressive TikTok accounts through Democratic operatives and into conservative media within 48 hours suggests that distraction may be harder to contain as California moves toward its May 4 ballot deadline.