FBI agents raided billionaire Stephen Cloobeck’s Beverly Hills mansion Tuesday in a probe of former Rep. Eric Swalwell tied to a sex worker.
At least two dozen agents arrived around 6 a.m. local time and spent several hours searching the massive California property. Cloobeck, a longtime backer of Swalwell’s political campaigns, was not home when they arrived.
Fox News reported the raid as part of the federal investigation into the former California Democrat. The sweep was also linked to a sex worker reportedly connected to that inquiry.
Several people were taken out of the house in handcuffs. All were released soon afterward. Authorities offered no details about what, if anything, agents seized.
Attorneys for Cloobeck confirmed he was away from the residence and said he “continues to have faith in this country’s judicial process.”
"continues to have faith in this country’s judicial process."
Cloobeck was arrested earlier this year in an unrelated case. He faced charges of attempting to influence witnesses in a criminal matter involving his fiancée.
The Beverly Hills operation did not arrive in isolation. In August, the FBI searched Swalwell’s Washington, D.C., home and seized his electronic devices at San Francisco International Airport.
Sources familiar with those moves tied them to a sexual misconduct probe. Swalwell was not arrested or detained then. That earlier action was covered when federal agents took Swalwell’s electronics during the same investigation.
At least five women, including one former staffer, have accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct or rape. He spent 13 years in Congress before leaving office in April after facing a threat of expulsion. He also withdrew from the California governor’s race earlier this year.
In his resignation statement, Swalwell wrote that he would fight what he called false claims while owning his own errors.
"I will fight the serious false allegations made against me."
He added a second line in the same written message.
"However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make."
One of the women who has leveled accusations, Lonna Drewes, held a Beverly Hills press conference with attorneys Lisa Bloom and Arick Fudali. Follow-up reporting on the device seizures included claims that an accuser’s attorney said the FBI never contacted his client before agents moved on Swalwell’s electronics.
On Monday, the White House’s new Government Transparency Task Force released declassified FBI documents on Swalwell’s relationship with Christine “Fang Fang” Fang. Those records drew fresh attention in the same week as the Cloobeck raid.
According to the declassified files, Swalwell told agents he had “physical relations” with Fang on a handful of occasions. Their last sexual encounter occurred in March 2015, by his own account in the records. The FBI interviewed him first in May 2015 and again in March 2016.
Fang had suspected ties to China’s Ministry of State Security. Her parents were reportedly considered known Chinese intelligence officers. Separate coverage of those files showed how Pelosi kept Swalwell on the Intelligence Committee after the bureau had already flagged the risk.
Additional reporting on the same document dump detailed how agents learned of the sexual relationship while examining a recruitment effort aimed at the then-congressman. Readers can find that thread in the archive piece on Swalwell’s ties to a suspected Chinese spy.
Cloobeck’s role as a longtime financial supporter of Swalwell’s campaigns places the Beverly Hills search inside the same orbit as the August device seizures and the misconduct accusations. The FBI has not said what evidence, if any, came out of the mansion. No sustained arrests from the Tuesday raid have been announced.
The sequence is now public and concrete: airport device seizure, D.C. home search, donor property raid, and the Monday release of the Fang records. Parallel reporting also tracked when agents seized Swalwell’s devices at the San Francisco airport in the misconduct probe.
Swalwell left Congress under the shadow of multiple accusations and an expulsion threat. Cloobeck, already facing his own unrelated witness-influence case, watched federal agents spend hours inside his Beverly Hills estate while he was away. The sex-worker link cited in coverage of the raid remains unnamed and unexplained in official detail.
What agents took from the property, and whether charges follow, still sits with the Justice Department. The public record already shows a former Intelligence Committee member, a major donor’s mansion, a suspected Chinese operative, and a string of sexual-misconduct claims moving through the same investigative lane.
Voters were told for years that serious questions about Swalwell could be waved away. Federal search warrants are harder to dismiss.
