No one should believe Cesar Chavez’s and Eric Swalwell’s stories were unknown to Democrats. Far more likely is that the details behind both men’s downfalls were not unknown to Democrats; they were simply unacknowledged. There’s a big difference, and it makes all the difference. Second only to the scandals themselves is the fact that Democrats stayed silent about them while letting the men who generated these continue to ascend. California values strike again.

In the 1960s American television comedy “Hogan’s Heroes,” one of the dupes of the Allied prisoners in Stalag 13 was Sergeant Schultz. Whenever he encountered, and he frequently did, evidence of the prisoners’ illicit activities, he would say, “I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!” to absolve himself from all blame. Apparently, when it comes to the myriad revelations about Cesar Chavez and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), the Democrats are reprising the “Sergeant Schultz strategy,” only they’re not doing it for comic relief; they are dead serious. They are equally transparent.

‘I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!’

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing until his death in 1993, Cesar Chavez became a cultural icon to America’s left as he sought to organize agricultural workers, who were predominantly Hispanic, in California and the West. His tactics combined nonviolence, strikes, urging consumers to boycott produce not gathered by his United Farm Workers union, and heavy usage of Catholic imagery in his actions (pilgrimages, processions, Masses, and more) and speeches. According to a bombshell NYT expose, he was also grooming and abusing young girls who were involved with his movement. He did so for years.

Thirty-three years after Chavez died, now-former Rep. Eric Swalwell is accused of similar sexual assaults. One woman accuses Swalwell of raping her in July 2018. Four other women have also made accusations of sexual assault and harassment.

This was hardly the first time Swalwell had been involved in controversy. A decade ago, he was at the center of a story regarding Christine Fang, aka Fang Fang, a woman accused of being a Chinese operative. According to an Axios story on Fang, she was a fundraiser for Swalwell’s 2014 campaign and “interacted with Swalwell at multiple events over the course of several years.”

Swalwell also had other questionable activities. He was involved in the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. As commentator Jonathan Turley described Swalwell’s role in a Hunter Biden 2023 press conference held to thumb its nose at a congressional investigation of the laptop episode: “Swalwell was standing in front of the same building aiding and abetting both a potential crime and the obstruction of congressional proceedings.”

RELATED: The left’s Cesar Chavez problem is much bigger than Cesar Chavez

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Chávez has been dead since 1993; the first accusations against him go back decades earlier. Swalwell first began serving in Congress in 2013; accusations of questionable conduct began almost immediately. In both cases, there were many episodes and many years.

Yet during this time, we are supposed to believe that no word about these two men got out within Democrat circles. The word was certainly out about both. There were reports about Chavez’s sexual improprieties that go back to the time when he was still alive. Swalwell’s seriously questionable decisions go way back, too.

Neither the inner ring of Democratic Party nor the House of Representatives is heavily populated. People know each other. They talk to each other. Yet we are supposed to believe that none of them talked about these episodes.

Instead, Democrats were elevating both. Chávez has schools and streets named after him; there are public holidays; there is a national monument to him in California, which Senate Democrats just blocked from being abolished. Swalwell was not diverted from moving up the California Democrat ladder. Until days ago, he was the front-runner for the state’s gubernatorial nomination.

While both stories have sickening similarities, the most overlooked one is the Democrats’ ignoring them for years.

Both scandals were covered up until someone uncovered them and made all the details public. Then Democrats were forced to run for cover themselves. Now they are rushing to run from them and make us forget that they, in all likelihood, knew significant details about both.

This is nothing new in their behavior. We are supposed to believe that the same thing happened with President Biden’s incapacity. With Hunter Biden’s behavior.

The pattern of admitting only when a thing is undeniable, and despite that it was obvious earlier, is all too clear. It is not simply the product of being above the rules. It is also the product of an establishment news media that Democrats know regularly avoid covering their scandals for as long as humanly possible. And when they are forced to cover them, Democrats know they will not ask the broader question: How did you not know? And when the rumors began to swirl — as they did in both cases — how did you not bother to see if they were true?

For both Chavez and Swalwell, Democrats had to ignore evidence before their eyes. They had to ignore the evidence brought to them. They had to either explicitly or tacitly construct an excuse. And they nonetheless let both men move forward despite what they knew or would have known had they simply looked. Now they want us to believe that, in the words of Sergeant Schultz, “I know noooooothing.”

​California, Cesar chavez, Eric swalwell, Scandals, Opinion & analysis