Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) who recently was revealed to be a target of an accused Chinese spy and is believed to allegedly to have had a sexual romantic fling had spent three years endlessly harping unfound claims that President Trump was colluding with Russia during the 2016 election, including falsely accusing the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. of meeting “with a Russian spy” last year.
On Tuesday, Axios reported that a Chinese national named Fang Fang or Christine Fang was an operative for China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s top intelligence organization, and targeted up-and-coming local politicians, including Swalwell. Fang reportedly helped fundraise for Swalwell’s 2014 campaign and even managed to install one intern in his office.
During her brief four year mission in the states, Fang allegedly slept with at least two Midwestern mayors while pursuing a slew of local-level politicians across the country in a bid to infiltrate the US political system. The accused Chinese Mata Hari had sex with an Ohio mayor in a car, an incident that was caught on FBI electronic surveillance. U.S. officials so far only know of at least the two mayors that were in sexual relationships with Fang. According to a former intelligence official, the Chinese for years are using this method of sending females as spies to seduce and “sleep with lesser-known members of Congress and staffers” in a bid to infiltrate the U.S political system.
“She was on a mission,” a US counter-intelligence official said of Fang where her plan was to maneuver herself into political circles, seducing unwitting potential up-and-coming heavy-hitters to get close to sensitive government intelligence. This occurred from 2011 until mid-2015 when the feds got wind of her sexual provocateur antics and vanished from the country.
Intelligence officials believe that Fang did in fact had a sexual relationship with Swalwell during her time she helped bundled donor checks for his 2014 re-election campaign as well as the countless interactions she had with the congressman in numerous events. When asked by Fox News Tucker Carlson whether the Intelligence official reports that he was intimate with Fang were true, Swalwell’s office declined to comment, citing national security with such information that might be “classified.”
“Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person — whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn’t seen in nearly six years — to the FBI,” Swalwell’s office said. “To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story.”
While Swalwell said he has cut off all contacts with Fang after U.S. intelligence officials in 2015 provided him a “defensive briefing” regarding counterintelligence concerns of her behavior and activities, his father and brother are still “Facebook friends” with the Chinese spy and has interacted by liking each other’s pictures on the giant social media site. In 2016, Fang “liked” a video post from Swalwell’s brother Joshua that featured him and the congressman. Swalwell’s father Eric Sr., “liked” a headshot photo Fang posted to Facebook earlier this year in March as well as another post from March 2019.
Politico interviewed Swalwell following the bombshell Axios report, asking the California lawmaker to elaborate on the type of relationship he had with Fang. Swalwell sidestepped the question, saying this controversy wouldn’t cost him his Intelligence Committee seat and that he believes Trump is the source of the leaked information about the Chinese spy.
“As the story referenced, this goes back to the beginning of the last decade, and it’s something that congressional leadership knew about it,” Swalwell said, recalling he first became aware of Axios was looking into Fang’s activities back in July 2019, around the same time he ended his failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and his continuous push of impeaching the president.
“I’ve been a critic of the president. I’ve spoken out against him. I was on both committees that worked to impeach him. The timing feels like that should be looked at,” he added.
Swalwell for the last three years has condemned the President, using his son’s June 2016 notorious meeting to falsely target the First Family on countless mainstream media interviews. The meeting was reportedly arranged by Trump Jr., at Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian-connected lawyer after an intermediary promised that she would deliver damaging information that would incriminate 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The meeting was disclosed when Jared Kushner filed a revised version of a form required to obtain a security clearance as a senior White House aide. Emails surfaced a year later in 2018 showing the lawyer had close ties to the Kremlin, making the notorious meeting the prime focus in three congressional investigations into Russian election interference as well as an area of inquiry in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
“Stated plainly, the President’s son met with a Russian spy,” Swalwell said on MSNBC back in January 2019.
“We now have the best evidence of that in our minority report the Democrats put out that Ms. Veselnitskaya was going all over the world and bumping into Dana Rohrabacher, which is a sign of a spy, someone who tries to create a coincidence encounter, and now we know that she was working at the behest of the Russian government. The President’s son met with a Russian spy,” he continued.
“Also at that meeting was Paul Manafort. So Paul Manafort knows he’s in a meeting where he knows the premise is dirt is being offered on the campaign’s opponent and he has this side relationship with a former GRU officer, a Russian military officer and now we know it’s sharing internal campaign in pulling data. So you see from all individuals here, from the president’s son to his son in law to his campaign chairman and eagerness and a willingness to work with the Russians, what that materialized to I think at this point only special counsel knows but thankfully Democrats on the Intelligence Committee in very short order, are going to be in the position to understand,” Swalwell added.
Trump Jr. seized on the Axios report, jabbing back at the California lawmaker in a Tweet saying that while Swalwell was accusing him of being “an agent of Russia,” at the same time he was “literally sleeping with a Chinese spy.”
So Rep Swalwell who spent years saying I was an agent of Russia was literally sleeping with a Chinese spy at the time.
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) December 8, 2020
You can’t make this stuff up. How can this compromised individual/moron continue to sit on an intelligence committee? https://t.co/NkU6F5Ctre
In a softball interview with CNN Wednesday morning, Swalwell claims he didn’t share any information with Fang before he received the Defense Briefing by the feds.
“Well, I know that I didn’t, again I can’t talk too much about the details of the case even though others may have violated their oath. I’m not going to violate mine, but the Axios story made it absolutely clear that no information was ever shared,” Swalwell said, noting that he was “shocked” that Fang was considered a threat by the FBI.
“You know, just over six years ago, I was told about this individual, and then I offered to help, and I did help. I was thanked by the FBI for my help and that person is no longer in the country, and I was a little surprised to read about my cooperation in that story because the story says that, you know, there was no … there was never a suspicion of wrongdoing on my part,” Swalwell said.
“And all I did was cooperate, the FBI said that yesterday, but the wrongdoing here is that at the same time the story was being leaked out is the time that I was working on impeachment on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees and if this is a country where people who criticize the president are going to have law enforcement information weaponized against them,” Swalwell added.
AxiosChinese SpyChristine FangCNN DebateDonald Trump JrImpeachmentMueller's InvestigationNatalia VeselnitskayaPoliticoPresident TrumpRep. Eric SwalwellRussian ProbeSpecial Counsel Robert Mueller
What do you think?