By Donald Jeffries
California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell was one of the loudest voices in Congress alleging that “Russia colluded” with the Trump campaign to undermine the 2016 presidential election. During the Robert Mueller investigation, Swalwell was very outspoken on the subject. At one point in 2018 he declared, “It doesn’t smell like collusion. It smells like more.”
On March 6, 2019, Swalwell told CNN, “In our investigation, we saw strong evidence of collusion. The Republicans now are choosing to bury it. I don’t know what you call it when the Russians make multiple approaches to members of the Trump family, the Trump organization, the Trump campaign to offer and preview dirt on Hillary Clinton, where the candidate stands in front of a public crowd and says, Russia, you’ll be rewarded if you hack her deleted e-mails.”
Swalwell had tweeted, on March 25, 2019, “The only person who has been caught lying about Russia is Donald Trump. If he thinks I’ve made a false statement, he can sue me. And I’ll beat him in court.” Later that evening, he appeared on CNN again, and declared, “The president should not be taking a victory lap that the best day of his presidency is that he was not charged with a crime. If he still committed offensive conduct. . . . Congress has a constitutionally equal role to play to hold him accountable.”
Earlier this year, former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell accused Swalwell and other Democrats on the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of lying about collusion. In a May 28 tweet, Grenell charged: “I read the transcripts. There were lots of questions from Democrats. Lots. You just didn’t find any collusion when they were under oath—so the transcripts were the only thing you didn’t leak to the D.C. media.”
In February 2020, Swalwell again charged President Trump with being “an agent of Russia.” Swalwell seemed to buy into the laughable claims of some intelligence officials that the Russians were backing Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party primaries. Swalwell told CNN, “The real question, though, is did Donald Trump know that Russia had a preference for Bernie Sanders? Donald Trump has, for the past few months, constantly and not so subtly been tweeting that his preferred candidate is Bernie Sanders. Is he taking intelligence that he’s getting and feeding it back to be aligned with Russia so he gets the candidate he wants in the general [election]?”
Lara Trump responded by saying, “They tried to say there was something wrong with the Ukraine phone call in the Senate. The president was finally acquitted of that ridiculous nonsense. Now, Eric Swalwell, who is a failed presidential candidate, is trying to drag this up again. It just kind of seems like he wants to be relevant and wants to get out there and talk on TV. I don’t really know what to say to that. It’s completely absurd.”
It is therefore deliciously ironic that Swalwell is in the news again, for having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, Christine Fang. Fang, suspected by American authorities of being an intelligence operative for the Chinese Ministry of State Security, was a fundraiser for Swalwell’s 2014 reelection campaign, and helped place a Chinese intern in his congressional office.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy asked, “Why is he still on the intel [committee] let alone why is he still a member of Congress? Remember what the intel committee gets: information that no other members are able to see and remember what this member did. He was so preoccupied going after this president, he wasn’t protecting our country from bad actors.”
Even though Swalwell supposedly cut ties with Fang in 2015, his father and brother both continued to be “friends” with her on Facebook. This would indicate that Fang, living again in China, is in some kind of special position, since Facebook is blocked by the Chinese government. A detailed report from news outlet “Axios” charged that Fang had used her connections in California Bay area politics to gather intelligence on politicians and government officials.
Republicans relished the hypocrisy, with Sen. Ted Cruz jokingly tweeting, “More than once, I’ve said ‘screw the Chinese communists.’ Little did I know how closely Swalwell was listening.” Swalwell, meanwhile, inferred that Trump was behind the story, and questioned the timing. Donald Trump Jr. told Tucker Carlson, “I appreciate you calling out Eric Swalwell. As someone who was probably the No. 2 recipient of his tinfoil-hat brigade attacks about Russia for years, where he called me a traitor, I find it very ironic that he was perhaps sleeping with a Chinese spy—but certainly, one that had infiltrated his inner circle.” Trump Jr. noted “CNN is as bad as the Chinese spies at this point,” referring to the media totally spiking the story.
There is more to this story, so expect updates from AFP in the New Year.
Donald Jeffries is a highly respected author and researcher whose work on the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations and other high crimes of the Deep State has been read by millions of people across the world. Jeffries is also the author of three books currently being sold by the AFP Online Store.
