Holy Hell: FBI Docs Showed Evidence of Eric Swalwell Taking Illegal Chinese Donations

This is incredible stuff — we knew former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) was screwing around with the Chinese honeypot. Now we have the documents to prove it, all provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Even if Swalwell avoided having his gubernatorial bid derailed in California by the sexual misconduct and rape allegations, he wouldn’t have served a full term with these new memos showing he allegedly accepted illegal donations, with Christina Fang, aka Fang Fang, as the source of these transactions. 

Swalwell admitted to a physical relationship with Fang, with the FBI later dropping Swalwell from their probe and focusing solely on her activities. They even tried to recruit her, knowing she had ties to Chinese intelligence (via JustTheNews):

#BREAKING: Declassified files show Chinese spy Fang Fang routed illegal donations to Rep. Swalwell (D-CA).

— Insider Wire (@InsiderWire) August 17, 2026

 

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.

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.”

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.

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.

What a scumbag. He threatened to sue Axios when the first Fang Fang breadcrumb fell, though everything seems to be true. 

BREAKING: Newly declassified @FBI files show @ericswalwell admitted a sexual relationship with Christine Fang, aka "Fang Fang," and that the bureau attempted to recruit Fang Fang without her knowledge. pic.twitter.com/3E19g1jBtX

— James Rosen (@JamesRosenTV) August 17, 2026

NYP: Eric Swalwell confessed to a drug-fueled sex romp with a suspected Chinese spy in newly released files that reveal the disgraced former congressman’s relationship with the woman went way deeper than previously known.https://t.co/J5lu5h03e2

— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) August 17, 2026