The federal search warrant that let agents seize former East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell's iPhone and MacBook Pro was issued under a civil-rights statute that is almost always aimed at police and public officials who abuse their power — not, on its face, the sexual-assault allegations that drove him out of Congress.

When the FBI stopped Swalwell at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday and searched his Washington home a day later, the national story was the seizure itself. But the underlying document points at something narrower and stranger than a straightforward assault case: the warrant invokes 18 U.S.C. § 242, "deprivation of rights under color of law." That is the framework prosecutors reach for when officials weaponize their office — and a former federal prosecutor says it isn't obvious how it maps onto a former congressman.

When the FBI pulled Eric Swalwell aside at SFO on Saturday and confiscated his phone and laptop, the seizure became national news within hours. Less noticed was the paper that authorized it — and what that paper actually alleges.

The San Francisco Standard, which obtained the warrant (external source, opens in a new tab), reported that agents took Swalwell's iPhone, a MacBook Pro, a charging cable, and a wall charger at 8:25 p.m. Saturday. The document was entered Aug. 13 and routed to Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson in California's Northern District. The agent who signed for it, Kyle R. Biebesheimer, works out of the FBI's San Francisco field office on its Public Corruption and Civil Rights Squad — the first clue that this is not being run as an ordinary sexual-assault case.

The second clue is the statute. The warrant cites 18 U.S.C. § 242 (external source, opens in a new tab), which makes it a federal crime to willfully strip someone of their constitutional rights while "acting under color of law." The Justice Department, in its own description of the law (external source, opens in a new tab), lists the people it usually targets: police officers, prison guards, judges, and others acting as public officials. It is the charge that was brought against the officers involved in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

That is a peculiar fit for Swalwell, who is not a police officer and no longer holds office. A former federal prosecutor, Tony Brass, told the Standard he couldn't see the connection, saying he was unfamiliar with anything in the case that would trigger the statute. The lone theory he offered was witness intimidation — the possibility that Swalwell had "used his position" against the women accusing him. Read that way, the government's interest may lie less in the alleged assaults themselves than in whether a sitting congressman leaned on the powers of his office to silence them.

§ 242, which makes it a federal crime to willfully strip someone of their constitutional rights while "acting under color of law."

The stakes of that framing are not small. Section 242's penalties climb with the underlying conduct. Ordinarily a violation carries up to a year in prison. But the statute allows a sentence of up to life where the acts involve kidnapping, "aggravated sexual abuse," or an attempt at either — a ceiling that turns an abstract civil-rights charge into something far heavier in a case rooted in assault allegations.

The seizure is the sharpest escalation yet in a matter that has already ended a career. Swalwell was a front-runner for California governor until April, when the Chronicle and CNN reported that multiple women had accused him of sexual assault. He abandoned the race and resigned his House seat within days. He has denied the allegations, and no charges have been filed. His allies have characterized the federal turn as political — an attempt to revive a dormant inquiry against a vocal critic of the current administration.

None of that is resolved by the warrant. The Justice Department, the FBI, and Swalwell's attorney did not respond to the Standard's requests for comment. What the document does show is the lens the government has chosen. Prosecutors did not go to a magistrate describing a private citizen accused of assault; they went describing a deprivation of rights "under color of law." Until they say more, that choice of statute is the clearest signal of where this is pointed — at a theory about the abuse of public office, not only the alleged crimes that ended one.