Pelosi has ‘no concerns’ over Swalwell’s involvement with Christine Fang
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday claimed she had “no concerns” despite serious allegations that Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the Intelligence Committee, was targeted by a suspected Chinese spy who slept with US politicians as a tactic to elicit government secrets.
The California Democrat was asked whether background checks needed to be conducted on all Capitol Hill staff and aides after Axios on Wednesday revealed that Swalwell had a years-long relationship with suspected CCP operative Fang Fang, aka Christine Fang.
“I don’t have any concerns about Mr. Swalwell,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference when only one reporter, from Fox News, asked her about the potential national security threat.
“There are those in the Congress who believe, and I am among them, that we should be seeing what influence the Chinese — I’ve been fighting them, as you know, for over 30 years — in terms of their undue influence in universities in our country, and the overtures they try to make to members of our Congress,” she said.
Pelosi said that she and other House leaders, along with members of the powerful intelligence committee, were briefed on Fang’s plot to infiltrate the US political system in the spring of 2015 and insisted that was the end of it.
“When that was made known to members of Congress, that was over, you know, that was the end of any communication with those people,” she said.
But The Post on Wednesday revealed that House Intelligence Committee Republicans were never told about Swalwell’s friendship with the honeytrap who fled back to China in 2015 when her cover was blown.
Swalwell, 40, who represents a California district south of Oakland, was among a group of Bay Area Democrats who were targeted by Fang who entered the US as a college student in 2011 and spent the next four years wooing the lawmakers in a bid to obtain sensitive intelligence.
On Thursday, Pelosi went so far as to blame the GOP, claiming it was “unfortunate” that Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy were “trying to make an issue of this” when leadership were all notified at the same time in 2015.
McCarthy has called for Swalwell to be booted from the elite committee, which is privy to some of the nations most closely held secrets.
“He’s trying to deflect attention from the fact he has QAnon in his delegation over there,” Pelosi claimed, referring to congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene, a supporter of the fringe QAnon conspiracy theory.
Intelligence officials said Fang had sex with at least two Midwestern mayors as she tried to get information from them.
Swalwell has refused to comment on whether he was intimate with Fang — his office claiming that information “might be classified.”
Fang and Swalwell first met when he was a member of the Dublin City Council in California and the Chinese operative began bundling donor checks for his re-election campaign, Axios reported.
The lawmaker said he was “shocked” to learn of Fang’s true identity and claimed that the story had been leaked to hurt him because his is an outspoken critic of President Trump.
