The top House Republican renewed his call for Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell to be removed from the House Intelligence Committee over his relationship with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang and said the FBI should give every member of the intelligence committee the same briefing he received Friday.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, called upon House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pull Swalwell, a California Democrat, from the sensitive post. He told Maria Bartiromo of Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News that the entire intelligence committee deserved the same FBI briefing about Fang that only he and Pelosi had received, arguing no one could hear the classified details that he had and still think Swalwell should be on the committee, with oversight over the CIA and the intelligence community.
“It was just the Speaker Nancy Pelosi and myself. It was a very thorough briefing. No one that was in that room could walk out and say Eric Swalwell should be on the Intel Committee. ... They had a briefing before in 2015, and I don’t know what that briefing was like compared to this one, but it could not have been the same. 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,” McCarthy said. “And the challenge here is the leaders of both parties are the only people who select to go on the Intel Committee. That is why today, Maria, what I’m going to request, that every single member on the House Intelligence Committee gets the exact same briefing from the FBI that I did, because if this individual is sitting on this committee, Eric Swalwell, they’ve got to know the background of what has gone on. I can’t talk about the classified part, but you know what’s out there in the press.”
Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, a Chinese national believed to be working with China’s Ministry of State Security, conducted an extensive political influence operation between 2011 and 2015 on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party in the Bay Area and elsewhere, according to a report by Axios that cited U.S. intelligence officials. Swalwell's association with Fang, which he has refused to describe in detail, reportedly lasted from 2011 to 2015. Swalwell was elected to the House in 2012.
Fang is suspected of targeting other politicians in California and elsewhere in the country, including romantic relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors. She reportedly acted as a financial bundler for Swalwell and helped place at least one intern in...
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