(José Niño, Headline USA) Newly declassified FBI records show agents gathered proof that Chinese national Fang Fang, known publicly as Christine Fang, used sex, planted interns, and hidden campaign money to gain influence over former Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.m according to a Just the News investigation.
President Donald Trump ordered the files released Monday through the White House Government Transparency Task Force as part of a push to expose foreign meddling in American politics.
Just the News reports the bureau launched a formal predicated investigation, a designation that let agents use surveillance and informants against a suspected crime already underway. Codenamed “Freshman Fifteen” and opened March 17, 2014, the probe first examined whether Swalwell traded internship slots for donations that Fang funneled through other people. Agents wrote that “Fang used conduits to conceal herself as a prohibited Foreign National source” on multiple occasions in 2013 and 2014, according to the outlet.
Investigators eventually dropped Swalwell as a subject in 2017 and pursued Fang alone for the alleged straw donations. Swalwell, who resigned from Congress in April, told agents in 2015 that he had “physical relations with Fang” repeatedly and later described her showing up unannounced before they “hooked up,” per the interview summaries Just the News reviewed. He also said his office treated her intern referrals as coming from a legitimate Asian American civic group.
Fang once directed an FBI confidential source to give $1,000 toward a Swalwell fundraiser, and a separate financial backer told agents she offered to reimburse him for a donation, both detailed in the released memos. The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, then under Jack Smith, received regular updates on the case, Just the News notes, though prosecutors ultimately never charged Fang, who fled to China in 2015 as agents searched her home and questioned her circle.
Before the criminal probe began, the bureau had spent months trying to turn Fang into an informant under the code name Rusty Thumbs, hoping she could expose Chinese Ministry of State Security influence efforts. One memo cited by Just the News states investigators believed “RT may be able to report on MSS influence campaigns directed at the U.S. government,” having identified her parents as “known MSS intelligence officers.”
Swalwell’s attorneys tried to block release of the files earlier this year, warning FBI Director Kash Patel in a cease and desist letter that “your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability,” according to Just the News. Swalwell has long maintained he cooperated fully once the FBI approached him about the relationship.
The declassified Swalwell files can be read below:
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
