 Swalwell and Rep. Elijah Cummings in December 2016 introduced the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which would create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate foreign interference in the 2016 election.They reintroduced the legislation for the 115th Congress in January 2017, but despite promoting a bipartisan commission, it failed to win any meaningful bipartisan support.The bill has been widely seen as unnecessarily duplicative given the then on-going Special Counsel investigation (2017–2019), as well as multiple existing committee investigations in the U.S. Congress.