# Friedberg heard Swalwell allegations months before they surfaced

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/friedberg-heard-swalwell-allegations-months-before-they/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) (Host) · CEO, Ohalo · Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.
- Host: [Chamath Palihapitiya](https://realalpha.app/people/chamath-palihapitiya/) · Founder & CEO, Social Capital · Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.
- Host: [Jason Calacanis](https://realalpha.app/people/jason-calacanis/) · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH · Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.
- Host: [David Sacks](https://realalpha.app/people/david-sacks/) · Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures · PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26.
- Show: All-In
- Episode: [OpenAI's Identity Crisis, Datacenter Wars, Market Up on Iran News, Mamdani's First Tax, Swalwell Out](https://realalpha.app/v/SFdqX7IY7RY/), Apr 17, 2026
- Moment: 1:00:08 to 1:03:00 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/friedberg-heard-swalwell-allegations-months-before-they/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/SFdqX7IY7RY/?t=3608

## Quote

> “the striking aspect of all of this for me was **how much knowledge there was** about these various incidents with the guy”
> — [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) at [1:01:30](https://realalpha.app/v/SFdqX7IY7RY/?t=3690) · All-In

## Takeaways

1. Friedberg says he heard reports in December and January.
2. He initially assumed the reports were political rumor.
3. He later reflected on how many people appeared to know.

## About this segment

David Friedberg says several people told him about allegations months before they became public, which he initially dismissed as rumor. Their timing made him question how widely the reports had circulated.

From “OpenAI's Identity Crisis, Datacenter Wars, Market Up on Iran News, Mamdani's First Tax, Swalwell Out”, Apr 17, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/SFdqX7IY7RY/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[1:00:13](https://realalpha.app/v/SFdqX7IY7RY/?t=3613) it was first rumored that Swalwell was going to run for governor, I started making some calls to various folks to be like, hey, you know, what do we think of this guy? Is he going to be a good candidate? You know, obviously, I and a lot of other people before they evacuate the state care a lot about the future of California. So I started checking around, I spoke to several people who independently told me that there's knowledge about this guy sending, you know, pics to employees, and that this guy has a bunch of stuff that's going to come out about him. So I heard all of this, not from one person, but from several different sources. This was back in December, going into January. And I largely kind of dismissed it because I was like, if this is true, this would have all come out already. I'm like, there's no way this is true.

[1:01:05](https://realalpha.app/v/SFdqX7IY7RY/?t=3665) If it was true, like people would have talked about it, they would have made a thing about it. If multiple people are telling me about this, then I've got to assume that it's a rumor that's being used to block him from running for governor versus it being a real thing, because multiple people had this knowledge and this information. So this was December, January, where I had these conversations. And at that point, nothing had come out. So I was like, okay, it doesn't seem like this is real. And then everything that I had been told started to come out in the last week.

[1:01:33](https://realalpha.app/v/SFdqX7IY7RY/?t=3693) So the striking aspect of all of this for me was how much knowledge there was about these various incidents with the guy, how so many people had this knowledge, and how no one had actually brought the knowledge to bear which begs the question why did they not do what was right by the victims or why did the victims sit on the sidelines waiting for the right moment to all come out together because this was broad knowledge within a community of people and they made the choice not to bring it forward with that knowledge and that's what was so striking to me about this whole thing i had honestly dismissed the whole thing as just being rumor mongering to try and besmirch the guy and it turned out that these were all being held back purposefully and deliberately for a very particular moment in time when they were all brought forward to be used and let me

[1:02:26](https://realalpha.app/v/SFdqX7IY7RY/?t=3746) just be clear these are all allegations nothing's been proven in court he doesn't get his day in court we just want to make sure there's a bunch of alleges here yeah no matter how bad and all that i'm saying is that people had told me about these supposed claims five months ago four months ago multiple people and had chosen not to bring it forward and that the victims had not come forward publicly with these claims and then there was this coordinated effort to bring everything forward at the same moment and that's what was so striking to me just how coordinated all of this