Rep. Eric Swalwell is threatening to sue FBI Director Kash Patel if Patel complies with a request to send the so-called Fang files to the Trump White House. The files are part of a long-secret trove of documents showing Chinese infiltrations into American politics and elections dating back more than a decade.
The same congressman who spent years demanding the release of every document even tangentially related to Donald Trump now wants these particular files locked away. The reason isn't hard to guess. They include him.
Swalwell, a top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and now a candidate for California governor, learned last week that the Trump White House might release the files. His attorneys, Norm Eisen and Sean Hecker, fired off a letter to Patel that read less like a legal argument and more like a warning shot:
"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."
The letter went further, promising consequences:
"Your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability."
Swalwell's office and Eisen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Just the News on Sunday.
At the center of this is Christine Fang, also known as "Fang Fang," a suspected Chinese intelligence asset who, according to a 2020 report by Axios citing U.S. intelligence officials, 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 Just the News, Fang reportedly helped Swalwell with fundraising and placing an intern in his office during the 2014 campaign cycle. Federal agents carrying out a counterintelligence investigation into Fang alerted Swalwell to their concerns and provided him with a defensive briefing in 2015, according to Axios. Fang soon left the United States in the summer of 2015.
The House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into Swalwell in April 2021. By May 2023, the committee sent a letter closing the matter:
"The Committee on Ethics informed you that it had determined to investigate allegations raised in the complaint that you may have violated House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct in connection with your interactions with Ms. Christine Fang."
The committee said it would "take no further action in this matter." Swalwell has consistently denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with Fang.
That's the end of the formal inquiry. But it's not the end of the story, because the files themselves remain unseen by the public. And Swalwell clearly wants to keep it that way.
The hypocrisy here isn't subtle. It's structural. Swalwell built a significant chunk of his political career on the principle that the American public deserves full transparency into government investigations, particularly when those investigations touch powerful people. He just never imagined that principle would come for him.
Start with the Mueller report. In March 2019, Swalwell declared:
"Congress and the American public must see every single word of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report. And we should see it at the same time as President Trump, a subject of the investigation, sees it. Nothing less than the rule of law in our country is on the line. Congress must also hear from Mueller himself to make sure that we have received the whole, unvarnished truth. No President is above the law."
Every single word. The whole, unvarnished truth. No exceptions.
Then there was September 2019, when Swalwell appeared on Fox News and accused the Trump White House and the Department of Justice of "an ongoing cover-up." He complained that transcripts with the Ukrainian president "were moved into a top secret covert action system" and called it "consciousness of guilt."
Swalwell also talked openly with liberal talk show host Rachel Maddow about investigating former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who was targeted by a secret FISA warrant. Page was never charged with wrongdoing. Special Counsel John Durham ultimately concluded there was no basis for the FBI to even open a probe into Russia collusion and target Page with a FISA warrant. Multiple probes found significant evidence of wrongdoing in that FBI investigation, including the false submission of a court filing.
Swalwell's own congressional website still carries a post about Page's 2016 trip to Moscow to deliver a speech, noting that "the Trump campaign approved this trip" and that Page "criticized American foreign policy as being hypocritical." The post treats a speech in Moscow as inherently suspicious. Bill Clinton did the same thing.
Then came the Epstein files. Swalwell relentlessly pressed to release all the Jeffrey Epstein files, even if innocent people were implicated. He dismissed concerns by the DOJ that the names of innocent Americans should be redacted. When the files weren't moving fast enough, he suggested penalties, including contempt charges and reduced DOJ funding for violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
In a tense exchange at a congressional hearing late last year, Swalwell confronted Patel directly:
"Every member of the Judiciary Committee, every Republican, every Democrat voted to release these documents and to have them in our hands."
"Where the hell are these files? And why are you keeping Donald Trump's name, to the degree that you are, out of them?"
No redactions for the innocent. No patience for process. Full transparency, immediately, regardless of who gets caught in the blast radius.
Unless, of course, the blast radius includes Eric Swalwell.
The New York Post editorial board called him out last week with characteristic directness:
"Eric Swalwell wants the Jeffrey Epstein files released — just not the Fang Fang files."
"Now, all of a sudden, Swalwell doesn't like the idea of the FBI releasing files."
The Post noted the obvious: "this time, the files involve documents about Christine Fang, or Fang Fang, an alleged Chinese spy who reportedly had a relationship with Swalwell."
Swalwell's response to all of this has been to frame himself as a political target. He posted on X:
"The reason Trump is so desperately trying to stop me is not because I'm running for Governor of California, but because now I'm the favorite."
That's the move. When transparency threatens someone else, it's a sacred democratic principle. When it threatens you, it's a political attack.
Here is the standard Eric Swalwell established with his own words and actions over the past six years:
Every single one of those principles now applies to him. And he wants none of them enforced.
Swalwell himself, in an exchange with Patel about the Epstein files, asked the question that now echoes back at him with uncomfortable precision:
"If the president is not implicated, then why not release everything?"
If the congressman is not implicated, then why threaten to sue?
