Gallego has denied any knowledge of Swalwell’s actions and called for him to be expelled from Congress. Swalwell has called the allegations against him “false” and pledged to fight them.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told CBS News in April that she had asked Senate leadership to investigate Gallego about allegations of misconduct that are “sexual in nature,” as well as “issues of campaign finance violations” but did not release details. A Gallego spokesperson called those allegations “right wing conspiracy theories.” Luna did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked about the status of the ethics probe, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune directed POLITICO to comments he made in April, when he told reporters that “the Ethics Committee will be tasked with trying to determine whether there’s a there there.”

Last month, Gallego established a legal defense fund.

The Big Game

In February 2023, 20 days after Gallego had launched his Arizona Senate bid to replace Kyrsten Sinema, the Gallegos, Swalwell, Swalwell’s then-chief of staff Yardena Wolf and several donors and their guests piled into State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, to watch Super Bowl LVII.

The gathering was billed as a fundraiser for the “Swallego Victory Fund,” a joint committee Swalwell and Gallego established in October 2022. Tickets to attend cost $5,000 and included a “pre-game brunch” that could be attended independently for $1,000, according to a copy of the invitation provided to POLITICO by Swalwell’s lawyer, Sara Azari. The committee raised a total of $56,505, all but $900 of which the FEC logged between Jan. 31 and Feb. 13, 2023, the day after the Super Bowl, according to FEC records. It spent $34,700 on event tickets and about $2,715 at The Henry, a brunch restaurant in Phoenix, the records show.

Donors to the committee included Rick Smith, the country’s highest paid CEO in 2024, and Dina LaPolt, a celebrity entertainment lawyer, both of whom attended the Super Bowl with family members. Neither Smith nor LaPolt responded to a request for comment. Wolf, Swalwell’s chief of staff at the time, also did not respond to a request for comment.

Gallego and Swalwell established the joint committee “in connection with Super Bowl LVII, and supporters who met the applicable contribution requirements were eligible to attend,” a Gallego spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO. The spokesperson added that “tickets were purchased at fair market value” and that “Hosting donors and supporters at sporting events in their areas is a common, bipartisan practice.”

In a statement, Azari told POLITICO that Swalwell had “followed his campaign counsel’s guidance to plan the event,” noting that “Tickets were purchased [and] distributed through the fundraiser, and all activity was properly reported and conducted in compliance with applicable campaign finance rules.”

The Swallego Victory Fund, which raised no money after March 2023, was shut down on Jan. 1, 2025. Swalwell and Gallego each received $7,643.89 in their personal campaign committees, with the remainder going to standard operating fees.

It is unusual, though not unheard of, for candidates to fundraise at the Super Bowl. Former Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich) hosted a fundraiser at the Super Bowl in 2010 that cost $5,000 to attend. And Swalwell dipped into campaign funds in 2024 to watch his San Francisco 49ers play in Las Vegas.