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Posted on 08/17/2026 7:31:18 AM PDT by Red Badger
The newly declassified investigation files also show that the FBI had initially tried to recruit the infamous Fang Fang as a source that could share information on Chinese influence operations targeting public officials in the United States.
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The FBI developed evidence that a Chinese woman with direct ties to that country’s intelligence service had potentially compromised a Democratic congressman from California with sex, foreign interns and illicit donations while she was being recruited to become a bureau informant a decade ago, according to bombshell memos that expose another threat to America’s political system from Beijing.
The files chronicling the relationship between Rep. Eric Swalwell and the Chinese national Fang Fang – also known by her English name Christine Fang – were declassified by President Donald Trump and released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force as part of a broader effort to unmask foreign threats to U.S. political and election systems.
They show the FBI opened a predicated investigation, which is a formal law enforcement inquiry backed by a factual basis or allegation that indicates a crime or national security threat already exists.
Unlike unpredicated "assessments," a predicated investigation allows agents to use advanced and intrusive methods like electronic surveillance or informants.
The files provide significant new details about the long-rumored relationship between Fang and Swalwell, including that:
The FBI initially wanted to investigate the congressman for a bribery scheme in which he exchanged donations from Fang for her planting interns in his office, but eventually decided to narrow the case to seek criminal charges only against Fang for making illegal donations to the California Democrat through conduits.
Swalwell admitted to having sex with Fang, his staff placing Fang’s interns in Congress and not having a strong enough campaign finance system to detect the straw donations she allegedly passed through U.S.-citizen conduits.
The Justice Department declined to prosecute Fang despite strong evidence of the illicit donations after she fled the U.S. as the FBI began interviewing her associates and raided her home. The early steps in the investigation were overseen in part by controversial prosecutor Jack Smith, who would later pursue Donald Trump on criminal charges.
The FBI was recruiting Fang to be a confidential informant through an undercover agent, assigned her the code name Rusty Thumbs, planned to hire her through a cutout company and was still evaluating her suitability as a confidential human source when they discovered her alleged criminal behavior.
The FBI knew early on during the recruitment that Fang was tied to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), Beijing’s notorious intelligence service. The bureau also identified her parents as MSS agents, knew she was raising money for California Democrats and was willing to use sex as a means of getting ahead in the world of U.S. politics.
Fang Fang’s efforts to influence U.S. politicians were first reported by Axios in 2020. According to the outlet’s comprehensive investigation, U.S. officials believed Fang sought to ingratiate herself with local politicians in the San Francisco Bay Area using campaign fundraising, networking, her charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships. Swalwell was identified as among the most significant targets of Fang.
Swalwell threatened to sue the FBI
Swalwell’s office told Axios at the time that he fully cooperated with the FBI and has reiterated that claim for years. “Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person — whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn’t seen in nearly six years — to the FBI. To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story,” Swalwell’s office said in a statement. Swalwell’s interviews with FBI agents, made public as part of the tranche of documents related to the case made public by the White House, confirm the former congressman’s claims that he cooperated with the bureau’s investigation.
Earlier this year, Swalwell threatened to sue the FBI and asked the bureau not to release the files associated with the investigation. Swalwell’s lawyers made his case in a cease and desist letter sent to FBI Director Kash Patel in March.
“The Congressman has never been accused of wrongdoing in that matter and your attempt to release the file is a transparent attempt to smear him and undermine his campaign for Governor of California,” attorneys Norm Eisen and Sean Hecker wrote. “Your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability.”
You can read the declassified Swalwell files below:
File
FBI 56D-SF-4662117 Packet - FINAL - REDACTED 8.14.26.pdf
File
FBI-Chronological 0342-SF-2754538 + 200D-SF-146143 Packet - FINAL REDACTED 8.14.26.pdf
FBI identifies Fang as “illegal source of campaign contributions”
The FBI probe targeting Swalwell and Fang was opened on March 17, 2014, and codenamed “Freshman Fifteen,” according to a now-declassified “Interim Authority” memorandum, which was reviewed by FBI headquarters and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.
The FBI assessment, which later became a full-fledged investigation, centered on allegations that Swalwell awarded internships at his offices in exchange for campaign contributions. The FBI identified Fang “Christine” Fang, a Chinese national, as the alleged facilitator of this exchange and alleged she employed conduits to route illegal donations.
“Investigation has revealed Fang ‘Christine’ Fang, a Chinese foreign national residing in the United States, is the facilitator of a scheme to trade access to Swalwell and internships in his congressional office in return for campaign contributions […]” the memo reads. The FBI specifically gathered evidence that Fang “used conduits to conceal herself as a prohibited Foreign National source,” for illegal campaign contributions “at least twice in 2013 and at least two more times in 2014.”
The agents found that the 2013 conduits “trace to Fang herself,” making them an “illegal source of campaign contributions.”
The objectives of the probe were ultimately to “obtain sufficient evidence to indict and arrest Swalwell and Fang for violations of campaign finance laws and quid pro quo exchanges,” the memo adds.
The FBI also caught Fang directly soliciting donations and promising to reimburse the contributor from her own funds, the memos state.
In March 2015, Fang contacted an individual who was also an FBI Confidential Human Source (CHS). She asked the CHS to attend a fundraising event for Swalwell and solicited a contribution.
The FBI agents on the case authored a memo on March 9, 2015 requesting approval for the CHS to “make a bona fide campaign contribution” in order to further the probe. That request was apparently approved. In a “CHS reporting document” dated March 24, 2015, an FBI agent reported that “CHS provided Christine Fang with his credit card number for the $1,000 donation.”
In 2014, Fang invited an individual with whom she had a financial relationship to a fundraiser for Swalwell, according to an FBI-302 from June 2015 memorializing an interview with the individual, whose name is redacted. The individual claimed Fang told him he “just needed to bring his checkbook and that FANG would reimburse him for his donation.” The individual told investigators that he declined.
Swalwell admits to sexual relationship, placing interns, poor campaign finance checks In a 2015 interview with the FBI, then-Congressman Swalwell told agents that he first met Fang in 2012, during his first congressional campaign. He admitted to the agents that he had “physical relations with Fang” on multiple occasions, according to the FBI summary. In a subsequent interview in 2016, Swalwell detailed one incident where Fang showed up at his door, after which Swalwell said they “hooked up,” according to the interview summary.
In that second interview, Swalwell confirmed that Fang did refer interns to both his campaign and congressional offices. He noted that he and his staff treated Fang’s referrals as coming from the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Associations (APAPA), an important constituent group in his district.
“FANG was unique when it came to interns, because SWALWELL saw FANG as connected to the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Associations (APAPA) and [redacted],” the 2016 interview summary reads.
“SWALWELL viewed anyone that FANG put forward for an internship as coming from APAPA,” it adds. “A significant portion of SWALWELL’s constituents are Chinese American and diversity is important.”
Swalwell’s statements to the FBI also indicate that he had concerns about some staffers' adherence to campaign finance regulations. In his second interview with the FBI in 2016, Swalwell told agents about a 2014 Las Vegas fundraiser at the Wynn Casino where Swalwell said an individual who appeared to handle the campaign’s finances was told “he needed to get it together when it comes to filing paperwork and reporting requirements. Paperwork was not [redacted] strength,” the FBI 302 memorializing the interview reads.
FBI drops Swalwell from probe, focuses on Fang
In the early stages of the probe, the FBI team sent regular updates to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section (PIN), which was then headed by the now-controversial prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith would later lead the Biden administration’s investigations and prosecutions of Trump. PIN oversees investigations and prosecutions that involve federal crimes like bribery of public officials and election crimes, including campaign finance crimes.
Eventually, however, after interviewing Swalwell on multiple occasions, the FBI determined that the investigation had found no violations of federal statutes by the congressman. As a result, the FBI eventually reclassified the probe on February 8, 2017, dropping Swalwell as a subject and focusing the investigation solely on Fang’s alleged violations of campaign finance laws.
In May, the FBI searched Fang’s house, according to an interview with one former intern in Swalwell’s campaign office. The individual, whose name has been redacted, is a Chinese national who was studying political science, presumably at a school in California, according to an FBI-302 form memorializing the interview. The intern told investigators that Fang said the FBI had interviewed her and searched her house.
According to a series of interviews with other colleagues, Fang fled the country and traveled to China around May 2015. One individual, described as an owner of a winery, “assisted Fang financially on several occasions” while she was in the United States, including co-signing leases, for a car and an apartment. This is the same individual Fang offered to reimburse for a donation to Swalwell.
The winery owner said that Fang approached him in late May to say she was returning to China because she had been questioned about the alleged political donation scheme. Oddly, she also reported to the individual that “her parents used to work for the Chinese government in a department akin to the US Secret Service.”
After the FBI’s interviews of Fang and her close associates prompted the suspect to return to China, the FBI formally closed the investigation in 2017.
In a closing memo, the FBI noted that its agents found evidence Fang violated several criminal laws related to the illegal donations, including prohibited contributions in the name of another, in excess of statutory limits, and from a foreign national, falsifying and destroying records, engaging in a false statements scheme, engaging in a false writing scheme, international bulk cash smuggling, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. The memo also noted that Fang had fled and was barred from re-entry by the State Department.
Before probe, FBI attempted to recruit Fang
Before the probe was opened into Fang’s alleged illegal activities, the FBI engaged in a months-long effort to recruit her using an undercover bureau employee and a fictitious company. The goal, according to contemporaneous memos, was to turn Fang into an informant on Chinese efforts to conduct influence operations targeting public officials, with whom Fang was close with several.
The Rusty Thumbs memos, identified by the codename agents gave Fang, show that the undercover employee met with her on several occasions to get to know her background and aimed to offer Fang a consulting job where she would use her Chinese connections to help the undercover employee’s fictitious business.
According to the memos, Fang was vague about her past in China, refused to elaborate on her parents’ Chinese government jobs and where she went to undergraduate school. However, she bragged about her political activities in the United States, including her work to connect donors to Swalwell’s congressional campaign, they show. Eventually, Fang agreed to work with the fictitious company. On June 14, 2013, she signed a contractor agreement for the consulting gig. That contract is contained in the FBI’s files.
It appears the bureau’s efforts to recruit Fang may have exposed her alleged campaign finance crimes. The effort to use Fang as a window into Chinese influence operations in California was ended just six days before the FBI opened its initial probe into the alleged illegal campaign contribution scheme, which she first hinted at while the FBI was trying to recruit her.
FBI knew Fang had ties to Chinese intelligence
The FBI knew early on that Fang likely had several ties to Chinese intelligence. One memo identified Fang’s parents as “known MSS intelligence officers.” The agents also suspected Fang herself had MSS ties. In fact, those suspected ties were why the FBI was interested in recruiting Fang through an undercover operation, the memos show.
“In addition, [Rusty Thumb] professed to knowing people of influence within the PRC,” one memo reads. “Given RT’s apparent connections with MSS personnel and the PRC government, coupled with her continuing contact with U.S. and local government officials, RT may be able to report on MSS influence campaigns directed at the U.S. government.”
In addition, at least one of Fang’s colleagues in the United States also suspected that she might have ties to Chinese intelligence. The winery owner told agents that he or she “sometimes got the impression that FANG is a Chinese spy,” according to a summary of the interview.
“She was very private and would frequently be gone without any explanation,” the individual reportedly told agents. “However, she also did things that [redacted] considered to be very obvious and not very smart.”
Editor's Note: John Solomon is on leave as Editor-in-Chief of Just the News while working as the chairman of the White House Government Transparency Task Force as an unpaid special government employee.
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And?
Cue Claude Rains
Well, he always wanted a big house; now he can live in one.
Will anyone at the FBI get fired or arrested? Or will this just be yet another opportunity for hearings where Republicans can scream and swear to show that they really care?
Interns in his office = Spys
Sometime, somewhere, somehow, someday, someone will be charged with some kind of crime.
There used to a moment long ago when “Treason and Sedition” would actually get you into trouble with Federal authorities.
Bidens autopen is mighty, its Orc like glow still appears when MAGA is nearby.
A politician you’re blackmailing is a valuable asset. And Swalwell is all ASSet.
Not bombshell. Everyone knew it.
Spacious 6X8 rooms, too!
P
Regardless of how totally illegal their actions may be, does anyone from the criminal F.B.I. Ever get arrested?
In a galaxy far, far away.............
She is back home in China and he is running for governor? So sick of the BS going on in this country the last decade or two.
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