Does Swalwell Have No Shame, or Is He Just Incomprehensibly Dense?

It’s difficult to know what is worse: the knowledge that Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) was in a political and personal relationship with a suspected Chinese spy, or that he apparently sees nothing wrong with either. One thing is for certain, however: the oleaginous Congressman should not be sitting on the House Intelligence Committee and should resign immediately. That he is not even considering resignation, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t either, is indicative of how far the concept of honor has been distanced from contemporary political life. Otherwise, an intelligence embarrassment like Swalwell would never have imagined that his political duties would continue unimpeded.

Beautiful spy wants intelligence; unwitting and sex-charged politician just wants "it."

It has been a week now since Axios, which is hardly the mouthpiece of conservative reaction, detailed how probable Chinese spy Christine Fang—alias Fang Fang—applied her particular sexual wiles to the objective of compromising politicians in the San Francisco area and across America. It has become a cliche to say you can’t make this stuff up, so let's just say that novelists like Ian Fleming were acutely aware of how the spy business operated 70 years ago, and, like the oldest profession in the world, it hasn’t changed much in the intervening years. Beautiful spy wants intelligence; unwitting and sex-charged politician just wants "it."

According to the Axios report, Fang fell into the waiting arms of some Midwest mayors,  and, according to one current U.S. official, reportedly “had a sexual encounter with an Ohio mayor in a car that was under electronic FBI surveillance.” Sometime during her campaign, she latched on to Swalwell, an ambitious municipal politician, who (at least in his own mind) seemed destined for great things. Swalwell, lest we forget, demonstrated the kind of moxy belonging either to a blatant fool or a supreme egotist when he sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Not only did Fang successfully fundraise on behalf of his federal ambitions, but she can be seen smiling by Swalwell’s side at many of his campaign events. 

This story clearly demonstrates two of the most unseemly qualities of some Democratic politicians: their willingness to project their own sins onto their political opponents well before these trespasses become public knowledge, and, immediately after they find themselves exposed, how effortlessly they’ll play the blame-game.

THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK

Let’s be clear: Swalwell does not deny that Fang worked for him or was a close confidant. What he isn’t too clear about is whether he had a sexual relationship with the woman. Not only has the Congressman entirely side-stepped the question despite multiple public appearances on the issue, his office (at Swalwell’s direction, no doubt) indicated that the nature of the congressman’s relationship with Fang is “classified.” 

"[Swalwell] also said that his sex life was classified. I know somewhere Bill Clinton is probably kicking himself saying ‘why didn’t I think of that when people started asking about my romantic follies.’"

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) quipped last week that another notable Democratic politician, one who always had some difficulty keeping his pants zippered, might be nodding with understanding. “[Swalwell] also said that his sex life was classified. I know somewhere Bill Clinton is probably kicking himself saying, ‘why didn’t I think of that when people started asking about my romantic follies,’” Gaetz told “Fox & Friends.”

Swalwell has told us very little else about his relationship with Fang, except that he did nothing wrong—and that, of course, the issue would never have been raised in the first place if President Donald Trump and his allies hadn’t wanted to use the scandal to deter Swalwell from his so-called impeachment mission. “I’ve been a critic of the President. I’ve spoken out against him. I was on both committees that worked to impeach him,” Swalwell told Politico. “The timing feels like that should be looked at.”

Moving on to CNN’s “Newsroom,” Swalwell went from playing the victim to insisting he was really a political hero, one who vowed to continue his sacred political mission. “And to do that against a critic of the President, they may think they’re going to silence me. They are not going to silence me,” Swalwell declared. “[W]hat they are going to do is they are going to make others think twice when they are asked to sit down and provide defensive information about people like this.”

But Swalwell was not just “a critic” of Trump. He was a strong proponent of the impeachment campaign, insisting that the inept Steele dossier that was reportedly ordered on the demand of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign substantiated disparaging claims about the President. Swalwell accused President Trump of cavorting with Russian prostitutes and Moscow oligarchs, working as hard as his colleague, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), to invent and embellish the Russia collusion hoax. 

Think about it: Swalwell cavorted with a Chinese mole for years, but then had the gall to say that Trump was a “Russian asset.” This he insisted long after the Mueller report itself concluded that the whole Russian collusion conversation had no basis in fact. All evidence to the contrary, Swalwell, like so many of his Democratic colleagues who engage in chronic mendacity, told MSNBC that it was incumbent upon the President to prove that he wasn’t a Russian spy. This clip captures Swalwell at this vacuous best:

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. He remarked last week that Swalwell is clearly “the pot calling the kettle black,” and noted, “Swalwell … ran around, let’s not forget, for four years accusing everyone of being Russian agents, let’s not forget, he was what I call a pee tape truther.” (Here, Nunes referenced the discredited Steele dossier, cited above, that made truly bizarre and clearly ridiculous claims about President Trump’s sexual preferences.)

[caption id="attachment_184378" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Rep. Eric Swalwell.[/caption]

PRE-EMPT, PROJECT, DEFLECT

There is no doubt that Swalwell was compromised. Whether you take Swalwell’s word for it that there was no “wrongdoing” on his part (whatever he means by that), or even if you are prepared to believe that the Congressman neither shared sexual trysts nor national intelligence with Fang, just being associated with an alleged Chinese spy is sufficient reason to resign from the House Intelligence Committee.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson noted the obvious last week: 

“As of tonight, with all this information public, Eric Swalwell, who has used his office to promote Beijing’s talking points almost word for word … who admits to a close personal relationship with an actual Chinese spy, who helped him get elected to Congress … that man continues to serve on the House Intelligence Committee, where he has unrestricted access to classified information.”

And as long as Democrats control the House of Representatives, Swalwell will continue to sit there. Swalwell has been remarkably adept at projecting his own Achilles Heel onto the President, and he has shown the same willingness to insist that he was not to blame for the compromising incident with Fang. Instead, others were to blame for pointing it out. Namely: conservatives.

This might have something to do with the fact that much of the mainstream broadcast media is towing the Democratic line, refusing to hold Swalwell accountable to the public. CNN and the rest were quite willing to provide a microphone and camera to the media-hungry politician when he was rooting out imaginary Russian moles in the Trump administration, but they have had little time to document Swalwell’s brush with espionage. The mainstream media has virtually ignored the reports in much the same manner they left the Hunter Biden email story to languish on the shelf until it rotted from disinterest. 

It is also worth pointing out that the intelligence community has displayed its own variety of selective interest in the incident. Fang’s activities in the United States did not go unnoticed by the FBI, who was watching her closely. They decided to act on that information when Swalwell’s star began to rise as a member of the House Intelligence Committee and decided to give him a “defensive briefing” in 2015 amid a widening counterintelligence probe. That’s what Democrats who are mixed up with Chinese spies receive. Republicans, meanwhile, who may have talked to Russian officials are interrogated and then charged with lying—ask the recently pardoned Michael Flynn.

What if the target of China’s affections had been a Republican congressman? Rep. Matt Gaetz agreed that the media response to the Swalwell story has been extremely limited, but speculated what their reaction would be if he, Gaetz, was the recipient of Fang’s affections. “If I was dating a waitress at a Chinese restaurant they would be burning a hole through my front door with the mainstream media’s you know, lights and cameras,” he told “Fox & Friends.”

Swalwell maybe contemptible and annoying, but he is more than that; he is bereft of judgment, common sense, and above all, honor. He did not tell anyone when the FBI informed him his office had been infiltrated by a probable spy, and, when the story became public last week, he refused to see how his actions had impacted his credibility and that of the United States. 

This is not the sort of individual who should be sitting on an intelligence committee. He might best make use of his talents sitting on a park bench somewhere.

[caption id="attachment_184377" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Rep. Eric Swalwell.[/caption]

DEMOCRATS CONTINUE TO DENY THE THREAT CHINA POSES

We know that the Democrats are soft on China. So soft they are basically footstools. While China continues to infiltrate the U.S. government by targeting congressmen who are either naive, careless, or treacherous, the rising power has ruthlessly rooted out and eradicated all sources of U.S. intelligence in China. The Democratic leadership isn’t even aware that China is playing to win and to roll right over America.

The Democrats have chosen, instead, to fallaciously focus on Russia as the primary security threat to the United States only because it appears to be politically expedient to do so at a time when they thought Trump was vulnerable to accusations of collusion with the former superpower.

Is it any wonder that Chinese professor Di Dongsheng, Vice Dean of the School of International Relations at Renmin University, bragged about having the United States political leadership in the bag during a late November speech to Beijing opinion leaders? Tucker Carlson used Di’s speech to open one of his shows in early December.

“We know that the Trump administration is in a trade war with us, so why can’t we fix the Trump administration? Why did China and the U.S. use to be able to settle all kinds of issues between 1992 and 2016?” Di asked, quite rhetorically.

"I will tell you that if there is one smoking bush there with Swalwell, I guarantee, there’s others."

“I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here. It’s just because we have people at the top. We have our old friends who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence,” the top Chinese political scientist said, with the simple but chilling assurance of someone predicting the sun will rise tomorrow.

Di could have been referring to how Chinese agents can easily blend into the offices of insouciant Democratic congressmen, those who fancy themselves as presidential material and can help focus America’s intelligence concerns on everybody but China. He was also clearly indicating that if Swalwell was compromised, so too had others: China has been grooming other sources of intelligence and influence as well. Meanwhile, people like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) continue to insist that President Trump is “Putin’s puppet.”

Is it any wonder that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” this week that Swalwell’s case is just one example that we do know about. "I will tell you that if there is one smoking bush there with Swalwell, I guarantee, there’s others,” he said, adding that, “the counter-intelligence system in our country ... need[s] to make sure they are really going after the real threats that we have."

What we now know about Fang’s exploits—sexual and otherwise—with American politicians must certainly be only the tip of the espionage iceberg. There is certainly much that has not been revealed. But tidying up Swalwell’s mess, and pretending its business as usual for the incompetent hypocrite, is no way close to addressing the real problem. Quite the contrary.