President Trump declassified FBI records that reveal former Rep. Eric Swalwell told investigators he had sex with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative, files his own lawyer now dismisses as "nothing new."
The White House Government Transparency Task Force published a trove of FBI memoranda on its Election Integrity webpage Monday, laying bare a three-year federal probe into Swalwell and Chinese national Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang. The documents, filed under the FBI codename "Rusty Thumbs," detail how Swalwell sat down with agents in May 2015 and admitted that his relationship with Fang had turned sexual shortly after they first met in 2012 at an event celebrating the Chinese-American community. He told investigators he had "physical relations with Fang on a handful of occasions," though he insisted the relationship never became romantic. Their last sexual encounter, Swalwell told the FBI, was in March 2015.
That admission is no longer a matter of anonymous sourcing or media speculation. It sits in official government records, declassified by the president and posted for public download.
The bureau opened a full-scale investigation into Swalwell under the case codename "Freshman Fifteen," classifying it as a "Sensitive Investigative Matter", the designation required when a subject is a sitting member of Congress. A June 2014 FBI memorandum listed possible violations including bribery of public officials, conspiracy, excessive campaign contributions, prohibited foreign-national contributions, and contributions through conduits, the practice of funneling money through third parties to hide its true source.
At one stage, agents aimed to gather enough evidence to arrest and charge both Swalwell and Fang.
In April 2015, the FBI searched Fang's California residence on two consecutive occasions. Agents seized business cards, documents, and a name badge from the U.S.-Asia Institute that read "Ms. FANG Fang, Congressman Eric Swalwell." The badge placed Fang squarely inside the orbit of a congressman who sat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the panel with oversight of America's spy agencies.
Swalwell returned for a second FBI interview in March 2016, this time with legal counsel. He again acknowledged the physical relationship with Fang but repeated that it never advanced into formal dating. He described Fang as a "striking individual" and said he believed she wanted something more romantic than he did.
The declassified files paint Fang as far more than a political groupie. Her parents were described in FBI records as "known MSS intelligence officers", a reference to China's Ministry of State Security, the country's primary civilian spy agency. A redacted FBI source told the bureau that Fang herself admitted her parents worked for a Chinese government department "akin to the US Secret Service," adding that her mother held a higher rank than her father. The same source told agents he got the impression Fang was also a Chinese spy, noting she would often disappear without explanation.
FBI memoranda stated that Fang facilitated a scheme to trade internships in Swalwell's congressional office in return for campaign contributions. She referred at least two interns to his office, a Chinese national she called her "sister," though they were not related, and a student from the University of California, Davis, who was placed in Swalwell's Washington, D.C., office.
Swalwell told agents that anyone Fang recommended for an internship was effectively coming through the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association, or APAPA, the organization that first introduced them. That framing put distance between himself and Fang's referrals, but the FBI's own documents describe the arrangement differently, as Fang's scheme, not APAPA's.
Congress has grappled with broader questions about how politicians handle sexual misconduct and its institutional consequences. The House itself voted unanimously in a prior session to force disclosure of taxpayer-funded sexual misconduct settlements, reflecting bipartisan unease with how such matters are handled behind closed doors.
Two witnesses gave the FBI accounts that deepened the case against Fang. A winery owner reported that Fang told him to "just bring his checkbook" to a Swalwell campaign event because she would reimburse him, a textbook description of an illegal straw donation. A wealthy restaurant franchise owner told agents that Fang wanted his contribution to Swalwell attributed to her. In at least two cases, the FBI found, Fang used middlemen to conceal herself as a foreign-national source of political donations.
The New York Post reported that the FBI investigation, which ran from May 2014 to May 2017, found evidence Fang solicited illegal straw donations, destroyed records, made false statements, and acted as an unregistered foreign agent.
Fang's exit from the country was abrupt. She asked the winery owner to meet for dinner and told him she was going back to China. She asked him to cover her June 2015 rent and find someone to take over her car lease. She also told him the FBI had questioned her about her connections to Swalwell and warned that agents would probably contact him too. Shortly after that conversation, Fang boarded a flight to China. She never returned.
The State Department later prohibited Fang from re-entering the United States. FBI closing records found she had violated several federal laws, though the specific statutes remain unidentified in the released documents. A May 2017 FBI closing memorandum determined that prosecuting Fang was "non-viable due to national security reasons," a phrase left unexplained.
Swalwell's case is hardly the only recent instance of an elected official's personal conduct raising serious questions about fitness for office. A Missouri judge removed a county prosecutor over alleged affairs that compromised her professional duties, and a North Carolina congressman exited his reelection race after an ethics panel recommended censure for sexual harassment.
A February 2017 FBI memorandum stated the investigation had "not found violations of federal corruption statutes perpetrated by Congressman Eric Swalwell." Investigators found no evidence "of a quid pro quo exchange between Fang and the Congressman or his office." The bureau dropped Swalwell as a subject and reclassified the probe to focus solely on Fang.
Swalwell's legal counsel, Sara Azari, responded to the release by dismissing its significance. Azari told Just The News:
"There is nothing new here. The government's own memorandum confirms what Congressman Swalwell has said for more than a decade: he did nothing wrong, and there was no basis to charge him with any offense."
She went further, framing the declassification as retaliation:
"What is new and deeply concerning is the apparent use of federal law enforcement information to punish or embarrass an outspoken critic of the current administration."
That defense rests on a narrow reading of the documents. The FBI cleared Swalwell of federal corruption charges, it did not clear him of poor judgment, and it did not address the national security implications of a congressman on the intelligence committee carrying on a sexual relationship with a woman whose parents were identified as Chinese intelligence officers. The absence of a criminal charge is not the same as the absence of a problem.
Axios first broke the Swalwell-Fang story in 2020, but the declassified FBI memoranda add official government documentation to what had been largely a media account. Fox News reported that the newly released files provide the first official confirmation of the physical relationship Swalwell had previously denied in public.
Fang, meanwhile, appears to have landed comfortably. Her last known public photo was reportedly taken in 2024 in a Beijing restaurant, seated with Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a Chinese state media outlet. A suspected intelligence operative who fled the United States after the FBI closed in on her, dining with a state media chief in the Chinese capital.
The FBI tried to recruit Fang as an intelligence asset around 2013, before the investigation into Swalwell began. That effort failed. The bureau then spent three years building a case, searched her home, interviewed the congressman twice, and ultimately let the whole matter close without a single prosecution. Fang violated federal law, the FBI's own records say. No one was held accountable.
Swalwell told agents he declined multiple invitations from Fang to visit China, saying he would only go on an official trip sanctioned by the intelligence committee. That decision may have been the one thing that kept a bad situation from becoming catastrophically worse.
Several open questions remain. The declassified files do not specify which federal laws Fang violated. They do not explain what "national security reasons" made prosecution non-viable. And Swalwell himself has not responded publicly to the release beyond his lawyer's statement.
When a member of the House Intelligence Committee sleeps with a suspected foreign spy and the federal government's response is to close the file and move on, the system did not work. It failed quietly, and now the paperwork is public.