“He raped me, and he choked me. And while he was choking me, I lost consciousness. And I thought I died. I did not consent to any sexual activity,” Lonna Drewes told reporters at a press conference at the office of her lawyers in Beverly Hills.

Drewes said Swalwell, whom she met through mutual friends, “spoke repeatedly about his ability to make connections” to help with her software company. Drewes said she was also considering a run for Beverly Hills City Council at the time. 

In a statement posted online, an attorney for Swalwell said he “categorically and unequivocally denies each and every allegation of sexual misconduct and assault that has been leveled against him.”

“These accusations are false, fabricated and deeply offensive — a calculated and transparent political hit job designed to destroy the reputation of a man who has spent nearly twenty years in public service,” attorney Sara Azari wrote.

Asked if Swalwell thought the women were lying about corroborating evidence such as medical records that they had provided to reporters, Azari wrote, “We haven’t seen documents.”

A week ago, Swalwell was one of three leading Democratic contenders for governor, but his support quickly collapsed soon after the San Francisco Chronicle reported last Friday that an unnamed former staff member said Swalwell solicited oral sex from her while she was working for him and twice sexually assaulted her when she was too drunk to consent. 

CNN later Friday published the same woman’s account, as well as those of three other women, one of whom said he kissed and touched her inappropriately and two of whom alleged he sent unsolicited messages. 

Swalwell suspended his gubernatorial campaign Sunday night and officially resigned from Congress Tuesday. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday proclaimed a special election to serve the remainder of Swalwell’s term on Aug. 18. That person would serve through December; several candidates are already running in a June 2 primary election to replace him next January.

Drewes said she met Swalwell three times in total in 2018 and did not see him again after the third time, when the alleged assault took place. She provided reporters a photo that her attorneys said showed one of their meetings, during an opening of a Beverly Hills restaurant. The restaurant opened in late April 2018, according to news reports.

One of her attorneys, Lisa Bloom, said she would be filing a complaint with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office later Tuesday, which will include text messages between the two, journal entries in which Drews said she recorded the incident at the time and information about people whom she told about the alleged assault. Drewes also told reporters she sought therapy afterward at a center for assault survivors in Connecticut. 

This has been updated with a statement from Swalwell’s attorney.

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Under a 2020 memorandum of understanding between the sheriff’s department and CoreCivic, detention center Warden Christopher LaRose has authority to decide whether to investigate rape allegations at the facility, which currently houses just under 1,500 federal immigration detainees, most of whom are in custody awaiting hearings and have not been convicted of a crime.

CalMatters obtained the memorandum after seeking additional information about the alleged rapes and four attempted sexual assaults through a California Public Records Act request. While a sheriff’s spokesperson said the agency was not investigating those cases, he said he was unable to turn over additional records because they were part of “a law enforcement investigation.”

CoreCivic in a written statement after this story first published said Otay Mesa staff conduct an administrative investigation of each sex assault allegation, though a spokesperson said the company does not conduct criminal investigations of sexual abuse allegations because it’s not a law enforcement agency.

“When a matter requires law enforcement intervention, we refer it to the appropriate authorities,” CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin said in a statement.

The company manages the detention center under a contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations. ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gustin said all allegations are recorded in a database, and “refer any potentially criminal matter to law enforcement.”

“Substantiated allegations result in disciplinary action and, where appropriate, referral for prosecution,” Gustin said. “If an individual is found to be at substantial risk of imminent sexual abuse, immediate protective action is taken.”

The company said that it has a zero tolerance policy for sex abuse and sexual harassment, and said detainees, staff or anyone present at a facility can report allegations in writing or through a hotline number. The company also said it offers anyone who makes an allegation medical, mental health and emotional support services.

CoreCivic did not respond to questions on whether it has any similar memoranda of understanding with other agencies, or details on any previous memorandum of understanding in San Diego County.

Seven privately run immigrant detention centers operate in California, with CoreCivic holding contracts for two of them. It could not immediately be determined if other detention centers have similar agreements with local law enforcement agencies.

“We’re horrified but not surprised to learn that numerous sexual assaults went uninvestigated at a CoreCivic facility,” said Susan Beaty, senior attorney with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice advocacy group.

“Local and state enforcement agencies have a responsibility to use their power to protect the rights of Californians in detention, and hold accountable both ICE and private prison companies that profit to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars to incarcerate immigrants in our state.”

A 2022 audit conducted by the outside company Creative Corrections found the facility met all federal standards for preventing sexual assaults.

San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Terra Lawson-Remer said she plans to question San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez at a hearing Tuesday night on ICE transfers from county jails.

“I do not have much confidence at all in CoreCivic’s ability to investigate these very serious allegations,” she said earlier this month.

Supervisor questions sheriff after CalMatters story

A member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors pressed San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez about the memorandum of understanding after this story published Tuesday night. Sheriff Kelly Martinez said her department doesn’t have enough staff to investigate allegations of criminal misconduct at every civil and criminal detention facility in San Diego, including Otay Mesa.

“There’s something about an MOU that explicitly delegates to CoreCivic —” San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Terra Lawson-Remer began to say.

“Well, we could not have an MOU at all,” Martinez interrupted, “and they wouldn’t report to us and we wouldn’t investigate. So we have to also work with the people in charge of the facility, the reporting mechanism would still have to come from the facility.”

Lawson-Remer called the decision to turn over criminal investigation decisions to a private company “troubling,” and asked whether Martinez could sign an MOU that required a sheriff’s office investigation of every criminal allegation.

“I don’t know if we have the staff capacity for that, perhaps you could give me a bunch more positions and we could create an investigative unit,” Martinez said, and laughed.

“I completely understand your concern, and that it doesn’t look like it’s an appropriate way to investigate these complaints but I really don’t know how many are occurring.”

Martinez went on to say she was responsible for her own detention facilities, and investigating ones that don’t belong to San Diego County is “a difficult ask.”

San Diego County is in the midst of a separate legal battle with CoreCivic over the Otay Mesa Detention Center. In a lawsuit filed this month, the county alleges the Trump administration and Tennessee-based CoreCivic illegally blocked a public health inspection of the Otay Mesa Detention Center. According to the lawsuit, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially cleared county officials to enter the facility but reversed that decision when the inspection team arrived.

911 calls from detention center

Overall, there were 142 calls for service to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department for the Otay Mesa Detention Center in 2024. Fourteen were identified as related to the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a 2003 federal law designed to prevent, detect and respond to sexual abuse and harassment in correctional facilities.

Last year, there were 159 calls for service to the Otay Mesa facility. Twenty-one calls were related to the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and of those, seven were allegations of rape.

CalMatters used a Public Records Act request to obtain a digital log generated by 911 dispatchers and emergency services for 2024 and 2025.

CalMatters attempted to obtain additional records about the sexual assault and attempted sexual assault incidents, such as the audio recordings of the 911 calls and the full dispatch log, but the sheriff’s department refused to release them stating the records were “records of a law enforcement investigation, or any investigatory or security files compiled by a law enforcement agency are exempt from disclosure.”

The records CalMatters obtained gave no indication whether the victims were detainees or employees. Similarly, the records gave no indication about the perpetrators.

The department’s memorandum of understanding with CoreCivic was signed and dated by former San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore in 2020.

“Under the Memorandum of Understanding…the facility’s Warden is responsible for investigating any allegation of sexual assault or abuse,” said Lt. David Collins, the media relations director for the sheriff’s department. Collins referred further questions about the incidents to CoreCivic.

He said CoreCivic “did not request our involvement” for any cases last year.

“Because no criminal investigations were initiated by the Sheriff’s Office, no reports were forwarded to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office for consideration of charges,” he said.

If deputies had investigated, the MOU would require them to forward their findings to CoreCivic.

“Upon completion/closure of an investigation, Investigating Agency will forward a copy of the investigation report to the Facility for retention as part of Facility’s record-keeping requirements,” the MOU states.

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Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be defense secretary, told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing, the report said.

News of the allegations surfaced last week when local officials released a brief statement confirming that a woman had accused Hegseth of sexual assault in October 2017 after he had spoken at a Republican women’s event in Monterey.

“The matter was fully investigated and I was completely cleared,” Hegseth told reporters Thursday at the Capitol, where he was meeting with senators to build support for his nomination.

The report does not say that police found the allegations were false. Police recommended the case report be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review.

Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine M. Pacioni said Thursday that her office declined to file charges in January of 2018 because they didn’t have “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Tim Palatore, Hegseth’s attorney, has said the woman who made the allegations was paid an undisclosed sum in 2023 as part of a confidential settlement to head off the threat of what he described as a baseless lawsuit.

The 22-page police report was released in response to a public records request and offers the first detailed account of what the woman alleged to have transpired — one that is at odds with Hegseth’s version of events. The report cited police interviews with the alleged victim, a nurse who treated her, a hotel staffer, another woman at the event and Hegseth.

The woman’s name was not released, and The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.

A spokeswoman for the Trump transition said Thursday that the “report corroborates” what Hegseth’s legal team has been saying “all along.”

Investigators were first alerted to the alleged assault, the report said, by a nurse who called them after a patient requested a sexual assault exam. The patient told medical personnel she believed she was assaulted five days earlier but couldn’t remember much about what had happened. She reported something may have been slipped into her drink before ending up in the hotel room where she said the assault occurred.

Police collected the unwashed dress and underwear she had worn that night, the report said.

The woman’s partner, who was staying at the hotel with her, told police that he was worried about her that night after she didn’t come back to their room. At 2 a.m., he went to the hotel bar, but she wasn’t there. She made it back a few hours later, apologizing that she “must have fallen asleep.” A few days later, she told him she had been sexually assaulted.

The woman, who helped organize the California Federation of Republican Women gathering at which Hegseth spoke, told police that she had witnessed the TV anchor acting inappropriately throughout the night and saw him stroking multiple women’s thighs. She texted a friend that Hegseth was giving off a “creeper” vibe, according to the report.

After the event, the woman and others attended an after-party in a hotel suite where she said she confronted Hegseth, telling him that she “did not appreciate how he treated women,” the report states.

A group of people, including Hegseth and the woman, decamped for the hotel’s bar. That’s when “things got fuzzy,” the woman told police.

She remembered having a drink at the bar with Hegseth and others, the police report states. She also told police that she argued with Hegseth near the hotel pool, an account that is supported by a hotel staffer who was sent to handle the disturbance and spoke to police, according to the report.

Soon, she told police, she was inside a hotel room with Hegseth, who took her phone and blocked the door with his body so that she could not leave, according to the report. She also told police she remembered “saying ‘no’ a lot,” the report said.

Her next memory was of lying on a couch or bed with a bare-chested Hegseth hovering over her, his dog tags dangling, the report states. Hegseth served in the National Guard, rising to the rank of major.

After Hegseth finished, she recalled he threw a towel at her and asked if she was “OK,” the report states. She told police she did not recall how she got back to her own hotel room and had since suffered from nightmares and memory loss.

At the time of the alleged assault, Hegseth, now 44, was going through a divorce with his second wife, with whom he has three children. She filed for divorce after he had a child with a Fox News producer who is now his third wife, according to court records and social media posts by Hegseth. His first marriage ended in 2009, also after infidelity by Hegseth, according to court records.

Hegseth, who joined Fox News as a contributor in 2014 before becoming co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend,” left the network after Trump announced his intention to nominate him.

Hegseth said he attended an after party and drank beer but did not consume liquor, and acknowledged being “buzzed” but not drunk.

He said he met the woman at the hotel bar, and she led him by the arm back to his hotel room, which surprised him because he initially had no intention of having sex with her, the report said.

Hegseth told investigators that the sexual encounter that followed was consensual, adding that he explicitly asked more than once if she was comfortable. Hegseth said in the morning the woman “showed early signs of regret,” and he assured her that he wouldn’t tell anyone about the encounter.

Hegseth’s attorney said a payment was made to the woman as part of a confidential settlement a few years after the police investigation because Hegseth was concerned that she was prepared to file a lawsuit that he feared could have resulted in him being fired from Fox News, where he was a popular host. The attorney would not reveal the amount of the payment.

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