Swalwell and Washington’s Culture of Containment
An insider look at how Washington’s culture of power, access, and silence enables bad behavior and why it so rarely carries consequences.
Welcome back to The Red Letter.
Washington doesn’t operate like a normal workplace. It’s more like a campus for the powerful—one where the rules are looser, the stakes are higher, and the consequences are optional, at best.
Members of Congress live apart from their families, spend their nights at fundraisers fueled by alcohol and access, and move through a world of fawning staffers, ambitious operatives, and lobbyists whose careers hinge on proximity to them. It’s a system that doesn’t just concentrate power—it distorts it.
And when that power is abused, the system isn’t built to expose it, it’s actually built to absorb it.
The disturbing allegations made against Eric Swalwell, the accusations made against Sen. Ruben Gallego, and the Cory Mills scandal have once again raised questions about behavior on Capitol Hill and what, if anything, leadership knows or chooses to ignore.
“It’s a culture of silence,” former congresswoman Carolyn Maloney told me. “Everybody in the Democratic party knew about it.”
Maloney said it’s hard to believe leadership was unaware of Swalwell’s reputation after his close relationship with a Chinese spy was revealed in 2020.
“He should have been thrown out of Congress then,” she added. But confronting those issues is another matter entirely.
Several former aides, from both sides of the aisle, described Capitol Hill as a kind of extended adolescence with group houses, late nights, heavy drinking, and a constant churn of young staffers trying to climb the ladder.
“These guys and gals are away from their spouses, doing late-night fundraisers, hanging out with sycophants and lobbyists who are trying to curry favor and access,” said a former senior Republican aide turned lobbyist. “They’re all liquored up, and they start to become reckless. They start to buy their own bullshit.”
🔒 🔒 Subscribe to The Red Letter for the full story on what insiders say really happens behind closed doors on Capitol Hill and why even when everyone “knows,” almost nothing changes.
