Eric Swalwell's congressional campaign burned through almost $192,000 on airline charges in 2025 alone, with more than 50 flights costing above $1,000 and 18 exceeding $2,000, campaign records reviewed by the New York Post show. The former California congressman, who resigned from office after allegations of sexual misconduct, also ran up more than $22,000 in flight charges through his governor campaign committee in just December of last year.
A former staffer told the Post that Swalwell flew "exclusively" first class during both his ill-fated gubernatorial campaign and his time in Congress. The numbers in the filings back up the portrait of a lawmaker who treated donor money like a personal travel budget.
The flight spending is the latest in a series of revelations about how Swalwell used campaign funds. Earlier this month, the Post reported he had spent $500,000 of donor cash at luxury hotels. His governor campaign committee, which still holds more than $4 million, lists close to $36,500 in hotel expenses in just the last year, spread across 70 different hotel charges in the U.S. and Mexico. The committee also logged more than 100 separate charges with Drizly, the alcohol delivery service.
Swalwell did not respond to a request for comment.
The campaign filings reviewed this week paint a picture of relentless air travel. Swalwell's congressional campaign alone accounted for more than $190,000 in airline charges during 2025. State campaign records for his governor committee added another $22,000-plus in December, including an $1,845 ticket from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco on December 5.
That D.C.-to-San Francisco fare alone would raise eyebrows. A standard economy seat on that route rarely approaches that price. A first-class ticket, on the other hand, fits the range, and fits the pattern described by the former staffer.
Swalwell's history of questionable campaign fund usage is not new. But the scale documented in these latest filings stands out even by his own standards.
The governor committee report also flagged a transparency problem. Swalwell listed more than 200 flight charges that did not completely describe the nature of the payment. Some charges in his report were noted as incomplete. For a committee sitting on more than $4 million in cash, the lack of detail invites hard questions about where the money actually went, and for whom.
The former staffer's account to the Post was blunt. Swalwell, the staffer said, would fly first class as a matter of routine, not as an occasional upgrade, but as a default setting funded by donors.
"He would exclusively fly first class. It's not a good use of donors' money to be living this luxurious life going across the country."
That quote captures the core problem. Campaign donors give money expecting it to fund a candidate's political operation, voter outreach, advertising, staff, events. They do not write checks so a congressman can stretch out in seat 2A on every cross-country hop.
Federal election law permits campaign funds to be used for travel related to campaign activity. But the sheer volume, more than 50 flights above $1,000, 18 above $2,000, and 200-plus charges with incomplete descriptions, raises the question of whether every one of those tickets served a legitimate campaign purpose, or whether Swalwell simply grew accustomed to a lifestyle his donors were unwittingly bankrolling.
The spending revelations arrive at the lowest point of Swalwell's political career. His gubernatorial campaign, which he launched with considerable ambition, was suspended in mid-April. Days later, he resigned from Congress after several women came forward with allegations against him. His career, as the Post described it, "imploded" this month.
Swalwell has since become the focus of criminal investigations in both Los Angeles and Manhattan. The U.S. Department of Justice has opened its own probe. The details of those investigations have not been publicly disclosed, but the fact that three separate jurisdictions are now examining Swalwell's conduct speaks to the breadth of the scrutiny he faces.
The motion to expel Swalwell from Congress came before his resignation, a sign of how fast the situation deteriorated within his own chamber.
At a campaign stop in Sacramento, described as his last public appearance, Swalwell talked about his travels. The irony is hard to miss. A politician who spent donor money jetting first class across the country was, in the end, grounded by the weight of his own record.
One detail in the filings deserves particular attention. Swalwell installed himself as treasurer of his governor campaign committee, the entity controlling more than $4 million in cash. That means the man whose spending is now under criminal investigation in multiple jurisdictions placed himself in direct control of a multimillion-dollar fund with minimal outside oversight.
Campaign committees typically appoint a treasurer to ensure financial accountability. When the candidate serves as his own treasurer, the usual check on spending disappears. The 200-plus flight charges with incomplete descriptions become easier to understand in that context. So do the 70 hotel charges and the Drizly bills.
The questions about Swalwell's residency arrangements during the governor's race only add another layer to a pattern of conduct that treated political infrastructure as personal convenience.
Meanwhile, senior Democrats have scrambled to put distance between themselves and Swalwell as the allegations and financial disclosures have piled up. The party that once gave him a prominent platform now treats him as a liability to be managed rather than a colleague to be defended.
The numbers tell a clear story. In 2025 alone, Swalwell's operations charged nearly $192,000 in flights through his congressional campaign. His governor committee added $22,000 in flights in a single month. Hotel bills reached $36,500 over the past year, with charges stretching into Mexico. Alcohol delivery charges numbered in the hundreds.
None of this money materialized from thin air. Real people, supporters who believed in a candidate or a cause, wrote those checks. They trusted that their contributions would be spent on the hard, unglamorous work of democratic politics. Instead, the filings suggest their money bought first-class seats, luxury hotel rooms, and Drizly orders.
Swalwell's silence only compounds the problem. He did not respond to the Post's request for comment. He has offered no public accounting for the spending patterns now documented in his own campaign filings. The incomplete descriptions on more than 200 flight charges remain unexplained.
The broader fallout from the Swalwell scandal has reached other members of Congress and raised questions about institutional accountability that extend well beyond one man's airline bills.
Criminal probes in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and at the Department of Justice are now running simultaneously. The specific focus of each investigation has not been made public. But the financial disclosures alone, the flight charges, the hotels, the incomplete filings, the self-appointed treasurership over $4 million, provide investigators with no shortage of material to examine.
Campaign finance enforcement in the United States has long been criticized as toothless. Candidates routinely push the boundaries of permissible spending, and consequences rarely arrive before the money is already gone. Swalwell's case may test whether the system can hold a former officeholder accountable when the spending trail is this conspicuous.
Donors deserve to know where their money went. Taxpayers deserve to know whether a sitting congressman used political funds to live a lifestyle he could not otherwise afford. And the public deserves a system that catches this kind of spending before it takes three separate criminal investigations to sort out the receipts.
When a politician appoints himself treasurer, flies exclusively first class on other people's money, and then refuses to explain 200 incomplete charges, the system didn't fail to send warning signs. The people in charge just chose not to read them.
