When I filed a Petition for Writ of Mandate to remove Eric Swalwell from the California governor’s race for failing to meet the state’s five-year residency requirement, I expected a legal response.
Instead, Swalwell responded on Twitter by calling me a “MAGA idiot.” That insult prompted me and my great researcher, Shannon Knutsen, to take a closer look at his past — specifically, his college writings.
What we found was revealing.
On December 3, 1999, while a student at Campbell University in North Carolina, Eric Swalwell published an opinion column in the student newspaper titled “U.S. Political Prisoners: A Cry for Justice.”
Writing under the moniker “Eric Swalwell, The Radically Poetic,” he concluded the piece with a blunt demand: “America, it’s time to wake up. Free Peltier. Free Abu-Jamal. Free all political prisoners.”
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Leonard Peltier was convicted in 1977 of murdering two FBI agents during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted in 1982 of murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
These are not symbolic cases or minor offenses – these were brutal killings of law-enforcement officers.
Yet in his editorial, Swalwell elevated both men as “political prisoners,” casting doubt on their convictions and framing them as victims of systemic injustice.
Rather than grappling honestly with the gravity of murdering law-enforcement officers, Swalwell’s article sanctified convicted cop killers as heroic symbols of resistance.
That rhetoric is not accidental. It echoes the moral inversion perfected by 1960s and 1970s extremist movements such as the Weather Underground, which openly championed armed struggle and portrayed police officers as expendable agents of oppression.
In that worldview, the uniform itself became justification for death.
Swalwell’s column borrowed heavily from this playbook – erasing victims, sanctifying perpetrators, and laundering violence through the language of civil rights.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Swalwell’s rhetoric toward law enforcement has hardly softened.
On February 2, 2026, Swalwell posted on X regarding Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers: “They need to lose their masks. Identification needs to come out.
Qualified immunity, gone. So they no longer think they’re invincible.” In a longer statement, he declared, “If we give them another penny, we’re just asking for the killing of another nurse named Pretty and mom named Good.”
He has also publicly suggested stripping ICE officers of their driver’s licenses and qualified immunity if he becomes governor of California.
This is not measured reform rhetoric. This is inflammatory language that portrays federal law-enforcement officers as murderers and denies them basic protections that allow them to perform dangerous jobs. It is rhetoric designed to energize the far left – and that is precisely the political calculation at work.
Eric Swalwell knows that the Democrat nominee is heavily favored in California’s governor’s race. He knows that the far left will turn out in force for the June primary.
So he is positioning himself as a radical champion of anti-ICE activism to secure that base. His college editorial was not a youthful anomaly – it was an early glimpse into a worldview that sees law enforcement primarily as oppressors.
What makes this especially jarring is that Eric Swalwell is the son of a police chief.
At a Santa Monica town hall on January 9, when asked what influenced him to choose politics as a Democrat, Swalwell responded that it was “probably to antagonize my parents.”
Gilbert came face-to-face with Swalwell during the town hall.
If true, that antagonism appears to have extended to a broader hostility toward the profession his father represented.
Instead of engaging in honest debate about law-enforcement policy, Swalwell’s rhetoric repeatedly frames officers as villains.
His demand to “Free” Peltier and Abu-Jamal in 1999, and his current push to strip ICE officers of protections and funding, share a common thread: a deep suspicion of police authority and a willingness to delegitimize those who enforce the law.
Leadership requires seriousness. It requires respect for institutions even while reforming them. It requires recognizing that police officers – whether local, state, or federal – risk their lives daily to protect the public.
I believe Eric Swalwell’s anti-police article reveals his true nature as a radical unfit to lead California. His record raises fundamental questions about his judgment and his commitment to the rule of law.
Voters deserve to know that the man seeking to be governor once publicly championed the release of men convicted of murdering law-enforcement officers – and now calls for stripping protections from federal officers doing their jobs.
California faces enormous challenges: crime, homelessness, border enforcement, economic instability. The state does not need a governor who views law enforcement through the lens of ideological grievance.
Not only that – either Swalwell is guilty of mortgage fraud in Washington, D.C., or he is ineligible to run for governor of California – he cannot have it both ways. That is the legal question before the court in my petition. But there is a larger moral question before the voters.
Does California want a governor who once called to “Free” convicted cop killers and now seeks to weaken officers enforcing federal immigration law?
I believe the answer should be no. Eric Swalwell should withdraw from the governor’s race and resign from Congress. California deserves leadership grounded in the rule of law – not radical posturing designed to win a primary.
Joel Gilbert is a Los Angeles-based film producer and president of Highway 61 Entertainment. He is the producer of the new film Roseanne Barr Is America. He is also the producer of: Dreams from My Real Father, The Trayvon Hoax, Trump: The Art of the Insult, and many other films on American politics and music icons. Gilbert is on Twitter: @JoelSGilbert.
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