In May 2015, former California Representative Eric Swalwell sat down with FBI agents at the bureau's Oakland field office and admitted he'd had "physical relations" with Christine "Fang Fang" Fang — a suspected Chinese intelligence operative whose parents were known Chinese intelligence officers — on "a handful of occasions."
The newly declassified documents, released Monday by the White House on President Trump's order, lay out a timeline that is worse than Swalwell's years of deflection ever suggested. Swalwell allegedly first met Fang in 2012 through the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association, known as APAPA. He told agents he "had a drink with Fang a couple weeks after they first met" and then had physical relations on multiple occasions. His last encounter with Fang was in March 2015 — just two months before the FBI sat him down to ask about it.
The FBI interviewed Swalwell a second time in March 2016 at the same Oakland field office. The documents describe one encounter at Swalwell's apartment where, according to the FBI summary, "FANG left after a couple hours. Swalwell barely remembers the event because he had taken Ambien prior to FANG arriving." The Ambien defense. For sleeping with a Chinese spy. At your own apartment.
The FBI's investigation went beyond the bedroom. The bureau found that Fang had made campaign contributions to Swalwell at least twice in 2013 and at least twice more in 2014 — contributions that were illicit, given her status as a foreign national. She also referred interns to Swalwell's congressional office. The FBI even attempted to cultivate Fang as a confidential source under the codename "RUSTY THUMBS" before the operation was abandoned.
So the FBI knew. They knew she was an intelligence operative with intelligence-officer parents who could not be turned. They knew she was funneling money into an American congressman's campaign. They knew she was placing people in his office. And they knew the congressman had been sleeping with her.
Swalwell was removed as a subject of the investigation in 2017. The FBI found no evidence he committed federal corruption violations or participated in a quid-pro-quo arrangement. No charges were filed.
That's technically exonerating — except it ignores the obvious. A member of the House Intelligence Committee, with access to some of the most sensitive national security information in the country, was physically involved with a woman the FBI believed was working for Chinese intelligence. The question was never whether Swalwell was a willing spy. It's whether a man who exercised that level of judgment should have been anywhere near classified material.
He wasn't removed from the Intelligence Committee for years after the relationship became public. He spent that time on cable news accusing President Trump of being compromised by Russia, all the while knowing it was actually him that had fallen for a classic honeypot spy trick. The man who admitted to the FBI that he slept with a Chinese operative multiple times spent years questioning everyone else's loyalty.
The declassified documents don't reveal a conspiracy. They reveal something almost worse: a system that identified the problem, documented the problem, confirmed the problem from the subject's own mouth, and then moved on. Fang disappeared back to China. Swalwell kept his clearance. The file gathered dust until a president decided to open it.
Illicit campaign contributions. Foreign-placed interns. A suspected spy in a congressman's apartment. All confirmed in the FBI's own paperwork, in the congressman's own words. The only thing missing from the file is a consequence.
