Newly released FBI documents show the bureau stumbled onto former Rep. Eric Swalwell's affair with suspected Chinese operative Christine Fang while trying to recruit her as a double agent, and Swalwell later admitted the relationship to investigators.
The White House Government Transparency Task Force published the declassified files Monday, laying bare a years-long saga that began with the FBI's failed attempt to turn Fang, code-named "Rusty Thumbs", into an American intelligence asset and ended with a formal probe into a sitting member of the House Intelligence Committee. The documents, drawn from FBI memos dating to 2013 and subsequent investigative files, confirm that Swalwell told federal agents he had "physical relations with Fang on a handful of occasions," the New York Post reported.
That admission came during a May 2015 interview, according to the files. At the time, Swalwell sat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the panel with oversight of America's most sensitive national-security programs. The FBI had already opened a probe into the California Democrat six days after closing its recruitment file on Fang in March 2014, concerned about the access she had gained to a lawmaker entrusted with classified information.
A 2013 FBI memo shows agents explored bringing Fang into a cutout company apparently run by the bureau, hoping to use her as a source on Chinese intelligence activity. But the effort fell apart. Agents concluded Fang could not be trusted to reliably provide information on China in exchange for money. They noted her parents were both Chinese intelligence officers, that she gave "inconsistent accounts of her parents' retirement plans," and that she had "affiliations" with Beijing's Ministry of State Security, China's equivalent of the CIA.
The FBI also flagged personality traits that made Fang a poor candidate for recruitment. Federal agents assessed that her "motivations appear to be centered on money and power" and that she exhibited "certain egotistical/narcissistic traits which may impact her suitability as a source."
Fang, for her part, appeared to understand exactly what leverage she carried. The 2013 memo records her telling the FBI's undercover agent that she would be able to "use her sexuality on politicians" if she wished because she was "young and pretty." She also told the agent she had turned down a chance to "marry rich in Beijing" because she "wanted to find her own path."
Those statements take on a sharper edge in light of what the FBI later discovered about her relationship with Swalwell.
One of the more striking details in the 2013 memo is a conversation in which Swalwell himself acknowledged Fang's suspected intelligence connections, in a joking manner. The memo records that Swalwell "commented that [Fang] was suspected as associated with the 'Chinese CIA' [MSS], albeit in a joking manner." Fang played along, joking "that all MSS officers were either old men or ladies, therefore, she could not be MSS." She added that the MSS "would have hired prostitutes instead of using an MSS officer directly to entice the officials."
Whether Swalwell took the suspicion seriously or dismissed it, the FBI documents show he continued the relationship. By the time agents gave him a classified briefing on April 30, 2015, he was still seeing Fang every two months. The Washington Examiner reported that the declassified files confirm Fang once arrived unannounced at Swalwell's apartment for one of their sexual encounters, with March 2015 identified as the last time the two had a physical relationship.
Swalwell admitted the physical relationship but denied it was romantic, a distinction that did little to address the national-security concerns at the heart of the FBI's investigation.
The probe went beyond the bedroom. Breitbart reported that the FBI's investigation, code-named "Freshman Fifteen," was opened as a "Sensitive Investigative Matter", a classification reserved for cases involving public officials or other politically sensitive subjects. Agents found that Fang had facilitated a scheme to trade internships in Swalwell's congressional office for campaign contributions, using middlemen to conceal her status as a foreign national barred from donating to American political campaigns.
An FBI memorandum stated plainly:
"Investigation has revealed that Fang Fang, a Chinese foreign national residing in the United States, is the facilitator of a scheme to trade internships in Congressman Eric Swalwell's Congressional office in return for campaign contributions."
That finding, sex, foreign interns funneled into a congressman's office, and illicit donations routed through straw donors, painted a picture of a textbook foreign-influence operation. Just The News reported that the FBI developed evidence suggesting Fang had potentially compromised Swalwell through all three channels. Swalwell was eventually dropped as a subject of the probe in February 2017, with no charges filed.
The absence of charges does not mean the absence of a problem. A member of the Intelligence Committee carried on a sexual relationship with a woman the FBI had identified as having ties to Chinese intelligence, accepted interns and campaign money through a scheme she orchestrated, and joked openly about her suspected spy connections, all while holding a security clearance that gave him access to some of America's most closely guarded secrets.
Swalwell's case is hardly the only instance of a Democratic lawmaker's personal conduct raising serious questions about judgment and accountability.
Before the documents went public, Swalwell's attorneys fired off a cease and desist letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, accusing him of weaponizing the release.
Attorney Sara Azari framed the disclosure as retaliation against a political critic, telling reporters:
"There is nothing new here. The government's own memorandum confirms what Congressman Swalwell has said for more than a decade: he did nothing wrong, and there was no basis to charge him with any offense."
Azari went further, calling the release "the apparent use of federal law enforcement information to punish or embarrass an outspoken critic of the current administration." The cease and desist letter warned Patel that "your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability."
At the time the letter was sent, Swalwell was described as the frontrunner in the Democratic primary for California governor, a race that would have placed a man once investigated for potential compromise by Chinese intelligence in charge of the nation's most populous state.
The "nothing new" defense is a curious one. The documents may confirm what Swalwell has privately acknowledged for years, but they are new to the American public. Until this release, the full scope of the FBI's findings, the code name, the campaign-contribution scheme, the internship pipeline, the unannounced apartment visits, the timeline of the bureau's growing alarm, had remained behind a classification wall.
The Fang story first broke into public view in 2020, when Axios published a report revealing Swalwell's ties to the suspected Chinese operative. GOP leadership later removed Swalwell from the Intelligence Committee, though Democrats returned him to the panel when they regained the majority.
Swalwell resigned from the House in April amid separate sexual misconduct and rape accusations, which he denied. Those allegations were unrelated to the Fang matter but added to a pattern of conduct controversies that followed the California Democrat throughout his career.
Chinese media, meanwhile, reported that Fang herself alleged both the FBI and CIA had attempted to recruit her, a claim that, if true, would mean Beijing's intelligence services were fully aware of the FBI's interest in their operative long before the American public learned a word of it.
Several questions remain unanswered. The FBI probe into Swalwell has no publicly known conclusion beyond his removal as a subject in February 2017. The reason Fang was assigned the code name "Rusty Thumbs" is still unclear. And the full scope of the declassified tranche, beyond the 2013 memo and the investigative summaries reported so far, has not been fully catalogued in public reporting.
What is clear is that a man who sat on the committee charged with overseeing American intelligence agencies carried on a sexual relationship with a woman those same agencies had flagged as a Chinese intelligence asset, and that when the FBI tried to warn him, he kept seeing her anyway. Fox News noted that Swalwell acknowledged the physical contact on multiple occasions while insisting the relationship was not romantic.
Swalwell's attorneys can call the release politically motivated. They can threaten lawsuits. But the documents speak in the FBI's own words, drawn from its own files, describing its own investigation. No amount of cease and desist letters changes what the bureau found.
When a congressman jokes about his girlfriend's ties to a foreign spy service and then keeps the relationship going, the public deserves to know, and the fact that it took this long to find out is its own indictment.
