The saga of Fang Fang, Eric Swalwell, and the FBI gets weirder as time goes on. Swalwell survived his affair with "Christine" Fang and the attempt by China's intelligence to penetrate Congress. The scope of that penetration made this a more significant scandal than just an extramarital affair, and the FBI's actions within it have now come under more serious question after documents have emerged on the investigation.
Just the News reports on newly declassified files that expose all involved, and point back to a botched counter-intelligence operation that let everyone off the hook. Rather than shut down Fang Fang's operation and arrest her, the FBI attempted to recruit Fang, even while knowing that she was funneling illegal donations into Swalwell's campaigns:
The FBI developed evidence that a Chinese woman with direct ties to that country’s intelligence service had potentially compromised a Democratic congressman from California with sex, foreign interns and illicit donations while she was being recruited to become a bureau informant a decade ago, according to bombshell memos that expose another threat to America’s political system from Beijing. ...
The files provide significant new details about the long-rumored relationship between Fang and Swalwell, including that:
- The FBI initially wanted to investigate the congressman for a bribery scheme in which he exchanged donations from Fang for her planting interns in his office, but eventually decided to narrow the case to seek criminal charges only against Fang for making illegal donations to the California Democrat through conduits.
- Swalwell admitted to having sex with Fang, his staff placing Fang’s interns in Congress and not having a strong enough campaign finance system to detect the straw donations she allegedly passed through U.S.-citizen conduits.
Say what? Not only did Swalwell engage in an affair with a Chinese national who threw money around, but he let her choose the interns Swalwell placed in Congress. Perhaps that had already come to light before now, but it's the first I recall reading of it. Fang apparently set up an entire ring of intelligence agents in Congress with Swalwell's cooperation. And the FBI didn't think that was worth charging? Why not?
At this point, an interesting figure comes into the story:
- The Justice Department declined to prosecute Fang despite strong evidence of the illicit donations after she fled the U.S. as the FBI began interviewing her associates and raided her home. The early steps in the investigation were overseen in part by controversial prosecutor Jack Smith, who would later pursue Donald Trump on criminal charges.
Did Smith bury the probe, or did someone bury it in spite of Smith? We'd probably enjoy the implications of the former, but it looks more like the latter. The counterintel section chose to recruit Fang under the code name Rusty Thumbs. (An explanation of that identity might be entertaining, needless to say.)
By the time Smith and other investigators attempted to enforce the law, Fang Fang was gone gone:
In May, the FBI searched Fang’s house, according to an interview with one former intern in Swalwell’s campaign office. The individual, whose name has been redacted, is a Chinese national who was studying political science, presumably at a school in California, according to an FBI-302 form memorializing the interview. The intern told investigators that Fang said the FBI had interviewed her and searched her house. According to a series of interviews with other colleagues, Fang fled the country and traveled to China around May 2015. One individual, described as an owner of a winery, “assisted Fang financially on several occasions” while she was in the United States, including co-signing leases, for a car and an apartment. This is the same individual Fang offered to reimburse for a donation to Swalwell.
- The FBI was recruiting Fang to be a confidential informant through an undercover agent, assigned her the code name Rusty Thumbs, planned to hire her through a cutout company and was still evaluating her suitability as a confidential human source when they discovered her alleged criminal behavior.
- The FBI knew early on during the recruitment that Fang was tied to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), Beijing’s notorious intelligence service. The bureau also identified her parents as MSS agents, knew she was raising money for California Democrats and was willing to use sex as a means of getting ahead in the world of U.S. politics. ...
Swalwell threatened to sue to keep these documents sealed, but he's got bigger legal issues on his mind these days. He also threatened to embarrass Trump aide Stephen Miller if the files came out, a move that backfired earlier this month:
Eric Swalwell leveraged his past sexual relationship with Katie Miller, wife of top Trump official Stephen Miller, to keep potentially embarrassing FBI files behind lock and key, a shocking new report revealed Thursday.
The news that the disgraced former Democratic Congressman from California — who resigned after several women claimed sexual assault and rape — once dated the now-wife of a top conservative leader stunned Washington.
“I was an intern working on Capitol Hill,” Miller posted on X about the situation.
Then Katie Waldman worked as both an intern and communications director on Capitol Hill in her 20s before moving to the executive branch in 2017. The relationship with Swalwell was before she met her now-husband.
And, in a stunning twist, Swalwell used the past relationship to quash the release of FBI files detailing his contacts with suspected Chinese intelligence operative Christine Fang, known as “Fang Fang,” Sources Say, a congressional blog, reported.
If you thought Swalwell was a scumbag before, this only serves to confirm it.
Is any of this actionable now? It depends on whether Swalwell got duped by Fang, or whether the FBI can prove he intentionally allowed Fang to create a spy ring on Capitol Hill. Even then, though, the statute of limitations is ten years on espionage charges, although perhaps an ambitious prosecutor might give it the ol' college try. If all they can prove is campaign-finance crimes, the only real impact is to Swalwell's reputation at this point, and ... there's not much less to damage, is there?
