Republicans, led by Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, are trying to remove Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee because of his 2012-2015 interactions with Christine Fang, the accused foreign agent. Fang helped raise funds for the Swalwell campaign in 2014 and once placed an intern at his office in the House. But when Swalwell was informed of concerns about Fang in 2015, he said he immediately cut off contact and cooperated with the agency’s investigation.
An FBI official has already defended Swalwell, telling the media in December that Swalwell was “completely cooperative” and “under no suspicion of wrongdoing”,
Republican House Party leader Kevin McCarthy intends to force a vote on Swalwell’s committee post on Thursday afternoon, arguing that the Democrat’s interactions with Fang disqualify him from carrying out the delicate task. Swalwell would not be entitled to a security clearance in the private sector and therefore should not have access to national security secrets through the intelligence panel, McCarthy argued at a news conference on Thursday.
Asked to explain his onslaught against Swalwell, McCarthy used classified information he said he received at an FBI meeting last year. “I can’t talk to you about what I was given at a confidential briefing,” he said, adding that the public record of Swalwell’s relationship with Fang should be sufficient to disqualify him.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who unilaterally appoints Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, supported Swalwell, saying she “does not fear” his actions.
The president of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, also defended Swalwell on Thursday, issuing a statement of support in a letter “Dear Colleague” with the aim of gathering the Democratic caucus at his side. Schiff noted that Republicans – including current Republican party member Devin Nunes of California and then-Mayor John Boehner – were briefed on the matter in 2015 and raised no concerns about Swalwell’s ability to continue serving on the committee.
“It is disturbing that leader McCarthy is trying to transform secret counterintelligence briefings like a political cudgel and use them to defame a colleague of the House in the process,” said Schiff. “Members face real risks of counterintelligence from sophisticated actors, and bad faith political attacks on members will only make the response more difficult.”
Members of Congress are not required to receive security clearances to access secret intelligence, although calls to deprive members of the House Intelligence Committee of their access to confidential information have become well-used political weapons in recent years.
Fang first interacted with Swalwell when he held a city council position in California, one of the many comings and goings she was supposed to have had with local officials across the country. She maintained those contacts until 2015, when the intelligence officers’ alarm grew over her relationship with Swalwell, and they offered him “defensive instruction”. These briefings are intended to alert targets of potential foreign operations in order to protect information from falling into the wrong hands.
Swalwell told POLITICO in December that he feared that Fang’s early story, which he said he first learned that Axios was chasing in mid-2019, would be planted to harm him after he emerged as a prominent critic of Trump during a short presidential candidacy.
“It seems that the moment must be analyzed,” he said at the time.