Rep. Eric Swalwell's gubernatorial campaign just cashed another $25,000 check from Keliang "Clay" Zhu, a partner at a law firm founded as a subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party's Ministry of Justice. That brings Zhu's total contributions to Swalwell's gubernatorial bid to $30,000, on top of over $10,000 he previously donated to the congressman's House campaigns.
Zhu is the lone attorney at DeHeng Law Offices' Silicon Valley Office in Pleasanton, California. He originally hails from China. His law firm bio boasts that he has assisted Chinese companies and funds in completing more than $9 billion in U.S. investments across chips, unmanned vehicles, new energy, artificial intelligence, industrial automation, and biopharmaceuticals. He also advised on a $100 million acquisition in which an investment fund of a major Chinese state-owned enterprise purchased majority shares in a Silicon Valley data analytics company.
This is not a man operating at the margins of U.S.-China commerce. This is someone whose entire professional identity revolves around advancing Chinese economic interests on American soil.
Michael Lucci, the founder and CEO of State Armor Action and a top China expert, did not mince words:
Once again, Congressman Swalwell got caught with his hand in the CCP cookie jar.
Lucci went further, calling the continued flow of money indefensible given what is already publicly known about Zhu's connections:
It's simply outrageous that Congressman Swalwell would take even more money from Keliang Zhu after Zhu's connections to the CCP were made public.
According to Fox News, Zhu had already donated $5,000 to the gubernatorial campaign in November. A Fox News Digital review in January revealed details about DeHeng's origins and its deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Then, earlier this month, Zhu cut the $25,000 check anyway. And Swalwell's campaign took it anyway.
DeHeng Law Offices was established in the early 1990s as "the China Law Office," a subsidiary firm of the CCP's Ministry of Justice. It was renamed DeHeng Law Offices in 1995 and now operates over two dozen offices in China.
The CCP fingerprints don't stop at the founding documents. Zhixu Wu, the Director and Senior Partner of DeHeng's Kunming office, sits on the Standing Committee of the 13th Kunming Committee of the CPPCC and is a member of the 12th Yunnan Committee of the CPPCC. The CPPCC describes itself as a "key mechanism for multi-party cooperation and political consultation." In 2017, Wu was awarded "the title of 'Excellent League Member'" by the relevant approving bodies.
This is the institutional ecosystem that produced Keliang Zhu. This is where Swalwell's campaign money originates.
Zhu's professional resume reads like a roadmap of legal interventions on behalf of Chinese state interests inside the United States. According to his own firm bio, he has negotiated with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of Treasury, and other organizations on behalf of Chinese enterprises, achieving "compliance plans" that "greatly reduced the compliance risks for Chinese clients in the United States."
He represented WeChat users in a lawsuit that successfully stopped President Trump's WeChat ban in 2020, a ban that the first Trump administration justified because the app's data collection threatened to give the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information.
Zhu also joined a lawsuit intended to stop a Texas law banning Chinese nationals from owning or leasing land in the state, calling the legislation "unfair, unconstitutional and un-American." A federal judge dismissed that case. He expressed similar opposition to a Florida law meant to prevent individuals from foreign adversary nations, including China, from buying up American land.
At every turn, when states or the federal government moved to limit CCP-linked influence on American soil, Zhu was on the other side of the courtroom.
This is not Eric Swalwell's first entanglement with individuals connected to the Chinese government. Christine Fang, a Chinese national also known as "Fang Fang," gained special access to Swalwell and his campaign and was deemed by U.S. officials to be part of a counterintelligence effort linked to China. Swalwell has repeatedly claimed he cut off ties as soon as U.S. intelligence officials warned him of the threat. A congressional ethics investigation eventually found no wrongdoing on his behalf.
But the pattern speaks louder than any individual exoneration. Republicans removed Swalwell from his post on the House Intelligence Committee, with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy citing the congressman's past run-in with a suspected Chinese spy.
Last month, Fox News Digital uncovered a previously unreported 2013 Facebook post in which Swalwell touted "great potential" for U.S.-China cooperation during a meeting with a senior CCP diplomat. Christine Fang "liked" that post.
Lucci tied the threads together:
First, Swalwell had a fiery romance with Fang Fang, a CCP honeypot. Then he was caught taking campaign money from China's favorite big law firm. Congressman Swalwell is either totally oblivious to the dangers of flirting with CCP operatives, or he doesn't care and would take a check from Xi Jinping himself.
There is a reasonable conversation to be had about when foreign influence crosses from legal campaign contributions into something more corrosive. This isn't that conversation. This is a sitting congressman, already burned by a Chinese intelligence operation, now running for governor of America's most strategically significant state, while accepting tens of thousands of dollars from a lawyer whose entire career is built on advancing CCP-adjacent interests against American security measures.
Lucci called for Congress to act:
Congress should pass a law to prohibit campaign cash from Communist China before Swalwell's sweet tooth has him hunting for another CCP honey pot or cookie jar.
Swalwell's campaign had every reason to reject this money. The connections were public. The reporting was done. The warnings were loud and clear. They took the check anyway.
That tells you everything about where Swalwell's loyalties compete.
