The man who spent years on the House Intelligence Committee lecturing America about foreign threats and demanding accountability from everyone else was confronted by FBI agents at San Francisco International Airport over the weekend.

Former Trump-deranged Rep. Eric Swalwell had a bad day earlier this week. The FBI seized his electronic devices under a search warrant. They then went to his Washington, D.C. home and seized additional evidence. The investigation is ongoing. The subject is a federal sexual assault probe.

This is not a minor development. A former member of Congress targeted under a federal search warrant is a significant escalation — and the timing, coming alongside the declassification of FBI files confirming his admitted sexual relationship with Chinese intelligence operative Christine Fang, makes it one of the most consequential stories of the political year.

Multiple women, including a congressional staffer and at least three others, came forward earlier this year with sexual misconduct and assault allegations against Swalwell. Two alleged incidents with the staffer reportedly occurred while she was intoxicated and unable to consent. If the accounts are accurate, those acts meet the legal definition of rape. Swalwell resigned from Congress in April and suspended his California gubernatorial campaign shortly after the allegations became public. He has denied all the accusations, calling them “flat false” and promising to “fight them with everything that I have.”

The phone seizure and house search suggest federal investigators have moved well beyond the preliminary inquiry stage. You don’t execute search warrants on a former congressman’s devices and residence based on speculation. You do it when you have specific probable cause documented to a federal judge’s satisfaction — when investigators believe evidence of a crime exists on those devices and in that home.

The Fang connection adds a layer that no amount of Swalwell denial can make disappear. Newly declassified FBI files confirm Swalwell admitted having a sexual relationship with Fang on multiple occasions. The same files show Fang funneled illegal campaign donations to Swalwell through straw donors and placed interns in his congressional office. The FBI investigated possible bribery and campaign-finance violations before dropping Swalwell as a target and focusing on Fang — who then fled to China without prosecution.

This is who sat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. This is who had access to America’s most sensitive national security secrets. This is who spent every available television appearance accusing Donald Trump of being compromised by a foreign government — while, as declassified files now confirm, carrying on a sexual relationship with a woman the FBI believed was working for Chinese intelligence.

Swalwell was cooperative during the airport confrontation, according to sources. Cooperation is not innocence. The devices are in FBI custody. The house has been searched. The investigation continues.

The FBI the left spent years treating as a heroic defender of democracy is now executing search warrants on one of their own. Accountability doesn’t always arrive on schedule. But it arrives.