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| Eric Swalwell and “Christine” Fang in 2012 |
This essay is going to take the form of “on the one hand, but on the other hand.” Let’s start with what could be construed as the right wing position. Yes, it’s troubling that Curmie is only now learning about this story, which was broken by Axios nearly a fortnight ago. This speaks to Curmie’s apparent insularity, which he vows to address, to the fact that the story broke during finals week, and to the decision on the part of the Times and other left-leaning news agencies not to cover the story.
This last part is indeed problematic. Even if the story is the legendary tempest in a teapot, it does seem to be worthy of at least a modicum of coverage: an alleged (and likely more than merely “alleged”) Chinese operative who gained enough access to a Congresscritter that she could apparently get an intern hired, who worked as a bundler for that politician, who clearly was a close affiliate, and who may indeed have had a romantic/sexual relationship with him.
There is no accusation of this last from a credible source (Tucker Carlson hardly counts), and Swalwell declines to comment. That said, if Curmie may adapt Bill Maher’s apt observation on the Anthony Weiner case from nine years ago (damn, was it that long ago?) to the present circumstances: if somebody asks you if you schtupped a Chinese spy and your answer is anything but “no,” you schtupped a Chinese spy. And it’s a stretch to say that either confirming or denying the allegation could be construed as spreading “classified” information.
Moreover, the implications of case go beyond Rep. Swalwell’s being a member of Congress. He’s a member of the House Intelligence Committee, in which position he has access to sensitive information. Following a closed-door briefing by the FBI after the Axios story broke, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy proclaimed that “The one answer that I got out of that briefing was there is no way Eric Swalwell should continue to serve on the Intel committee,” adding that “I just think there are definitely 200 other Democrats that I know could fill that place.” And it’s certainly plausible that the FBI would reveal information to Reps. McCarthy and Pelosi that they wouldn’t discuss even off the record with reporters: they want to avoid letting the Chinese know what information they have and don’t have, lest China refine their espionage activities to more successfully avoid detection.
Finally, quoting the Axios article here:
Private but unclassified information about government officials—such as their habits, preferences, schedules, social networks, and even rumors about them—is a form of political intelligence. Collecting such information is a key part of what foreign intelligence agencies do….
Close relationships between a U.S. elected official and a covert Chinese intelligence operative can provide the Chinese government with opportunities to sway the opinion of key decision-makers….
China’s spy services want to influence [Chinese diaspora] communities to become more predisposed to the regime, as well as surveil and stamp out potential organized opposition to the Communist Party….
Access to local political offices can give Beijing’s intelligence operatives opportunities to collect information on communities of Chinese descent in the United States.
Meanwhile, other than a brief denial of wrongdoing—to a friendly interviewer—Swalwell has declined to comment… except for righteous dudgeon that the story had been leaked. Of course, he blames the Trump administration. Sigh.
Oh, and the UK’s Daily Mail (a less than unimpeachable source, but still…) reports that Fang has a “lingering presence in [Swalwell’s] family’s Facebook friendship circuit,” whatever that may mean.
So much for that point of view. On to what we’ll call the left wing perspective. Let’s start by quoting the Axios article that started this whole business. Remember, this is the result of over a year of investigative journalism:
U.S. officials do not believe Fang received or passed on classified information….
[A] Bay Area political operative and a current U.S. intelligence official… who witnessed Fang fundraising on Swalwell's behalf, found no evidence of illegal contributions….
Amid a widening counterintelligence probe, federal investigators…alerted Swalwell to their concerns—giving him what is known as a defensive briefing. Swalwell immediately cut off all ties to Fang, according to a current U.S. intelligence official, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
[In 2015] U.S. intelligence officials also provided multiple briefings to White House officials and members of Congress on the case, a current senior official said.
So, let’s review the bidding: there is no evidence that Fang got any information of significance from Swalwell or anyone else; that Swalwell knew about Fang’s connections to the Chinese government prior to receiving the defensive briefing, after which he immediately cut ties with her; that, despite the snark a few paragraphs earlier in this blogpost, there was anything illicit about the relationship between Swalwell and Fang. True, if there were an affair, that wouldn’t be something to brag about on Swalwell’s résumé, but he was single at the time, so the prospects for extortion are pretty feeble. And Fang is not accused of doing anything illegal in her work with Swalwell’s political campaigns.
It’s also worthy of mention that among the Congresscritters briefed about the situation by federal investigators five years ago was… drumroll, please… Kevin McCarthy. But now, like Claude Rains in “Casablanca,” McCarthy is shocked, shocked! that Swalwell would be allowed to serve on the Intel Committee. Curmie raises a skeptical eyebrow at the idea that McCarthy seems to have allowed this untrustworthy character to serve on that Committee for five years without complaint, but now, when Swalwell has become a particular thorn in the side of the Trump administration and has thereby achieved a degree of notoriety as one of the few significant Democrats under the age of 50, Swalwell is somehow unfit.
We can readily imagine the tears McCarthy and his cohorts would shed if unsubstantiated rumors and scurrilous innuendo were to derail the political career of a rising star in the opposition party. Curiously, there are no calls for Swalwell to be arrested for treason or anything of the sort, only to remove him from an important committee. Curmie is trying to wrap his head around this part. The best I can do is to suggest that any kind of legal action would require proof, whereas wounding an adversary can be accomplished with scuttlebutt and innuendo, and demanding Swalwell be removed from Intel is sufficient to rally the base, which is the whole point of this exercise.
Don’t get me wrong: consorting with a foreign spy is not an activity to be encouraged in anyone, let alone in a sitting Congresscritter. Still, assuming Fang was a spy, she appears to have been very good at her job. That she fooled Swalwell, and there is literally nothing to suggest anything worse than that on Swalwell’s part, means only that he didn’t detect her deception better than, apparently, a lot of other politicians, lobbyists, and the like.
In short, show Curmie evidence—real evidence—that Rep. Swalwell did anything morally, ethically, or legally wrong. Perhaps that evidence exists, and perhaps the FBI presented it to McCarthy and Pelosi at their meeting. Perhaps David Koresh really was a prophet. Perhaps the moon is made of green cheese.
But back to the initial question: should the Times be covering this story? Absolutely, because one of two things must be true: either there’s substantial and credible evidence that a member of the House Intel Committee has been compromised, or the House Minority leader is willing to impugn the integrity of a fellow Congresscritter without that evidence, whether to score some cheap political points or to engage in a little wagging of the dog to distract attention from Dear Leader Trump’s latest escapades or the GOP’s love affair with QAnon wackadoodles. Either way, there’s an influential Member of Congress who shouldn’t be allowed to serve.
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