‘Frat house’ greeted Wahab at Swalwell’s old Castro Valley office

In April, then-Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Castro Valley, suspended his ascendant campaign for California governor and resigned his seat in Congress, after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct during his tenure.

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Not only did Swalwell leave his former Congressional District 14 in a state of emotional and political turmoil, his former Castro Valley office was also left in disarray too, according to his successor, Rep. Aisha Wahab.

Wahab told Bay Area News Group that when she arrived at the Castro Valley office for the first time in August, it “looked like we were stepping into a frat house, and not necessarily a Congressional office.”

She said that trash cans were left unemptied, framed pictures and art remained on the walls or on the floor that should have been packed away. Miscellaneous papers and office supplies lay strewn about, with drawers and cabinets left disorganized.

Wahab and her staff also found numerous items, including a trove of wine, a small armament of Nerf guns, and even baby clothes apparently meant for Swalwell’s own children. There was also a portrait of former Hayward Police Sgt. Scott Lunger, who was killed in the line of duty in 2015.

Swalwell did not return a request for comment.

His attorney, Sara Azari, told Bay Area News Group in a statement that the matters of clearing his office were left to his former staff after he resigned.

“Former Congressman Eric Swalwell left immediately after his resignation,” she wrote. “He had no access to any office or materials while his staff continued running the office (after his departure).”

Additionally, there were 19 other Congressional Awards for recipients in the 14th Congressional District, who never got them.

Notably, there was also a Purple Heart and an Army Commendation medal supposedly belonging to a war hero who has yet to receive them. Swalwell’s office has been in possession of those high military honors for nearly a decade.

“When Swalwell resigned in April, the entire staff was notified that they would have to pack up their belongings and leave the office by Aug. 18,” Wahab told Bay Area News Group in an interview.

“I think the district office is responsible for the district. It looked like there was absolutely a complete lack of care for the transition.”

Wahab’s staff inventoried all the items and then moved them to a storage unit in Hayward, where they remain.

The newly-elected congresswoman said she and her team are currently deciding what can be kept and what should be discarded, as well as how to return all the medals to their respective recipients.

Swalwell believes the two military awards belonged to the same veteran, who was a former constituent his former office lost contact with in 2017, according to Azari. That veteran, she noted, never received the medals.

“The medals were retained for safekeeping in the event the veteran or his family contacted the office for retrieval,” Azari said.

The lawyer said Swalwell’s staff made “several attempts to reconnect without a response and believed the veteran may have moved away.”

She did not provide details on when the office first received the medals, and said Swalwell and his staff are “forbidden by law to publicly release the veteran’s name.” (Additionally, according to the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor, there is no comprehensive list of recipients of this award.)

Azari said the other Congressional Award medals were delivered to the office in July, months after Swalwell resigned, which put the responsibility of finding their recipients on his former staff.

With regard to the wine, the attorney wrote that Swalwell received some wine as gifts and kept some in the office, noting that the district contains dozens of wineries.

“He never participated in any drinking at his office,” Azari wrote, adding that such alcohol-fueled celebrations were “rare” and that “participation was voluntary.”

“He does not recall any excessive drinking by anyone at such events,” Azari continued. “He remembers Castro Valley as an office that put constituents first, looked out for its own, and kept its sense of humor.”

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Bay Area News Group spoke to two former Swalwell staffers on the condition of anonymity who revealed insights into what it was like inside both the Washington, D.C. and Castro Valley offices.

The staffers said standard procedure for an outgoing member of Congress normally requires staff to clear and prepare both offices for an easy swap – anything unnecessary has to go. Anything else left behind should only be things useful to the next member’s team.

“We were very clearly instructed…that the only things left behind are things that should belong to the office and not an individual in an office, that could or would be useful to the incoming member,” one staff member said.

This staffer said the Nerf guns were part of a longstanding tradition of “Nerf wars” that originated in the D.C. office, where staffers were known to keep a “Nerf pistol” in their desks.

“We would have these little Nerf guns and people would mess around with them. If you needed someone’s attention you would fire a dart at them or something,” according to the staffer. “If there’s multiple at the (Castro Valley office), I guess that was probably a tradition they kept going with.”

The staffer also said that alcohol is common in “a lot of offices with drinking-aged adults in them. I would often keep some beers in the fridge or something.”

The staffer also said the D.C. office was left “empty of everything except desks and technology,” noting that the condition of the Castro Valley office was “unacceptable.”

Meanwhile, a second staffer said that there were over a decade of items left in the Castro Valley office after Swalwell’s departure. The team that stayed on through until Aug. 17, a day before the district’s special election, did “their best to help as much as they could.”

The Congressional Awards sent to the office in July were never delivered to the right people “because it’s hard to get in touch and get those picked up in a couple of weeks,” the second staffer said.

The most prestigious of all of the awards found in Swalwell’s office is the Purple Heart.

The country’s oldest military award dates back to 1782, and is given to active military service members or veterans who are killed or wounded in combat.

Jerome Sapiro Jr., commander of the San Francisco Chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, told Bay Area News Group it is “unusual” for a member of Congress to be the custodian of such a medal.

Sapiro Jr. added that normally, it is high-ranking military personnel that are the stewards of the medals awaiting their recipients, not members of Congress.

While it is common for a member of Congress to physically present the medals to a recipient, it would be rare that the representative would subsequently keep the medals in their offices, he said.

Sapiro Jr., who was born and raised in San Francisco, comes from a family of veterans. His father served in World War II in the Army, his grandfather, a Navy veteran, served in the Spanish-American War and his great-uncle was an Army veteran of World War I.

He received his first Purple Heart after he was wounded in combat during the Vietnam War, and was presented the award while in a hospital bed overseas.

“For people who are killed, that may be the most significant memento of their military service,” he said. “The survivors that receive it, it’s something that the family may treasure.”

Meanwhile, the Army Commendation medal is awarded to Army members or foreign military members who display valorous and heroic acts, but does not require combat for recognition.

The Department of the Army did not return Bay Area New Group’s request for comment.

Still, Sapiro Jr. acknowledged Swalwell could have had these medals for “entirely innocent reasons,” but observed that it’s not a great look.

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