Well, this is awkward.
Ruben Gallego has spent the past few days doing his best impression of a man who barely knew Eric Swalwell. Tearful press conferences and carefully worded outrage. The whole performance. “It hurts, the fact that he hurt a lot of people, and it pisses me off that now we all have to deal with all of his BS, his family, the poor victims that are still going to have to seek justice,” Gallego said Tuesday.
It was quite a show.
While Gallego is busy scrubbing Swalwell from his public image, federal campaign finance filings have come to light that couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time.
On June 7, 2021, Gallego was married at the Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve Puerto Rico. His own campaign filed a $2,000 expenditure at the nearby Fairmont El San Juan hotel that same day… yeah… the day of his own wedding. Swalwell’s political operation, meanwhile, logged two charges totaling $1,522.11 at the Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve Puerto Rico on that exact date. Politico’s Playbook confirmed Swalwell was at the wedding. An Instagram post by a wedding guest, reviewed by the Daily Mail, tagged the same resort as the ceremony location.
California Rep. Linda Sanchez, also confirmed by Politico as an attendee, dropped $1,809.79 in campaign funds at the Hyatt Regency, plus an earlier lodging deposit of $540.93 back in May.
Under federal law, campaign funds cannot be used for personal expenses. That’s not a gray area. Attending a friend’s wedding is about as personal as it gets.
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Naturally, Gallego’s office did not respond to the Daily Mail’s questions about whether Swalwell attended or whether that $2,000 charge was personal. Gallego and his wife, Sydney, had tied the knot legally in December 2019 at the National Gallery of Art. The June 2021 event was their public ceremony, announced after a February 2020 engagement. Not that this makes a difference, as it still wasn’t a campaign expense.
This isn’t the first time Gallego’s personal life has raised eyebrows. During his Senate campaign, voters learned he filed for divorce from Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego while she was pregnant — informing her the marriage was over on December 15, 2016, the same day he moved to seal the records. He cited their status as “high-profile public officials.” Kate’s own response in the filings said she was “without knowledge” of his claim that the marriage was “irretrievably broken.”
So, he’s definitely cut from the same sleazebag cloth as Eric Swalwell. No wonder they were besties, right?
But Gallego has other problems to deal with as well. A video surfaced over the weekend showing Swalwell in a hotel room with a sex worker. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna confirmed its authenticity on Fox News on Monday and informed viewers that the woman who recorded it was possibly underage. Another man appears in the video. While we never see his face, social media sleuths say his profile bears a striking resemblance to Ruben Gallego. That identification has not been confirmed, and Gallego denies he’s the other man in the video. But speculation has not waned.
There’s a reason why Gallego seems to be nervous lately.
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