Rep. Eric Swalwell spent years demanding the public see every classified document that might embarrass Donald Trump. Now that the FBI may release files touching on Swalwell's own relationship with a suspected Chinese spy, the California Democrat has lawyered up and is threatening to sue.
The contradiction is not subtle. It is the kind of reversal that, in a functioning political culture, would end a man's credibility on the subject forever. But Swalwell is not just any backbencher. He is a top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and a declared candidate for governor of California, a man who built his national brand on the word "transparency."
As Just the News reported, Swalwell's attorneys Norm Eisen and Sean Hecker sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel warning against releasing files related to an FBI counterintelligence probe into the congressman's interactions with Christine Fang, a Chinese national believed to be working with China's Ministry of State Security. The lawyers threatened legal consequences if the files were forwarded to the Trump White House alongside other evidence of Chinese election influence operations.
Swalwell's public record on transparency is extensive and unambiguous. In March 2019, he issued a statement declaring:
"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."
Six months later, in September 2019, he went on Fox News and accused the Trump White House and the Department of Justice of running "an ongoing cover-up." He claimed transcripts with the Ukrainian president "were moved into a top secret covert action system", language he described as showing "consciousness of guilt."
And late last year, Swalwell confronted Patel directly at a congressional hearing over the Jeffrey Epstein files, demanding: "If the president is not implicated, then why not release everything?" He pressed further, asking where the files were and why Trump's name was being kept out of them. He even floated withholding funding from the Department of Justice over delays in releasing Epstein evidence mandated by Congress.
As recently as that hearing, Swalwell was telling the public that every member of the Judiciary Committee, "every Republican, every Democrat", had voted to release the Epstein documents. He said the files were needed "so that we could stand up for victims and to make sure that we know the names of the people who enabled Jeffrey Epstein."
Swalwell also joined other Democrats in sending a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding release of the entirety of Jack Smith's report on Trump stemming from the Mar-a-Lago raid.
The pattern is clear: when the files might damage Trump, Swalwell wanted every page in public hands. When the files might damage Swalwell, he wants a lawsuit.
The files at the center of this dispute trace back to Christine Fang, known in press accounts as "Fang Fang", a suspected Chinese intelligence asset who, according to Axios reporting cited in the Just the News account, conducted a political influence operation in the Bay Area and elsewhere on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party between 2011 and 2015.
During the 2014 campaign cycle, Fang reportedly helped Swalwell with fundraising and even placed an intern in his congressional office. Federal agents carrying out a counterintelligence investigation into Fang alerted Swalwell to their concerns and provided him with a defensive briefing in 2015. Fang left the United States that summer.
The full scope of the FBI's counterintelligence probe into Swalwell's interactions with Fang has never been made public. That is precisely the material the Trump White House may now release, and precisely the material Swalwell's lawyers are trying to keep sealed.
The House Ethics Committee opened its own investigation into Swalwell in April 2021, examining whether he may have violated House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct in connection with his interactions with Fang. In May 2023, the committee sent Swalwell a closure letter stating simply: "The Committee will take no further action in this matter."
Swalwell's lawyers have seized on that outcome. In their letter to Patel, Eisen and Hecker wrote:
"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."
They added a direct threat: "Your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability."
Rather than address the contradiction in his transparency record, Swalwell has framed the entire matter as political persecution. 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 claim, that the potential release of FBI counterintelligence files is really about a California governor's race, invites its own scrutiny. The files in question concern Chinese infiltration of American politics. The FBI's interest in Fang predates Swalwell's gubernatorial ambitions by nearly a decade.
The New York Post editorial board put the contradiction plainly: "Eric Swalwell wants the Jeffrey Epstein files released, just not the Fang Fang files." The board noted that "all of a sudden, Swalwell doesn't like the idea of the FBI releasing files" because "this time, the files involve documents about Christine Fang, or Fang Fang, an alleged Chinese spy who reportedly had a relationship with Swalwell."
Swalwell has accused Trump and Patel of meddling in the California governor's race, a framing that conveniently redirects attention from the underlying question of what the FBI files actually contain.
The Swalwell reversal looks even more striking when measured against his own conduct during the Russia investigation. Swalwell spent years publicly pressing the case against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser who was targeted by a secret FISA warrant. Swalwell talked openly about the investigation with liberal talk show host Rachel Maddow and maintained a page on his congressional website detailing Page's activities.
That website page included this passage: "In July 2016, a month after Russia's DNC meddling was revealed in the press, Page traveled to Moscow to make a speech." Swalwell noted that "The Trump campaign approved this trip" and that Page's remarks "criticized American foreign policy as being hypocritical, remarks which ultimately led to his resignation from Trump's campaign."
What Swalwell did not mention: giving a speech in Russia was something Bill Clinton did as well. And Special Counsel John Durham later concluded there was no basis for the FBI to open the Russia-collusion probe or target Page with a FISA warrant in the first place.
So Swalwell was happy to amplify an investigation that Durham found baseless, one that surveilled an American citizen based on a flawed warrant, while simultaneously threatening legal action to prevent disclosure of an FBI probe that touches his own conduct with a suspected foreign intelligence operative.
Meanwhile, questions about Swalwell's finances and conduct continue to mount. His campaign legal payments totaling $305,000 have drawn scrutiny, and separate reporting has raised questions about his financial disclosures.
Several questions remain unanswered. The specific contents of the FBI files the Trump White House might release have not been publicly identified by title or document list. Whether any files have actually been released is unclear. The date of the lawyers' letter to Patel has not been disclosed. And the DOJ has cited privacy concerns about names of innocent Americans as a cause of delays in releasing some Epstein evidence mandated by Congress, a concern Swalwell dismissed when it applied to those files but now implicitly embraces when his own name is at stake.
Swalwell's financial records have raised additional questions about delayed taxes and campaign-funded child care, adding to a broader pattern of scrutiny around a congressman who has built his public identity on holding others accountable.
The House Ethics Committee's decision to close its inquiry without action does not mean the underlying FBI counterintelligence file is empty or irrelevant. Ethics committees close cases for many reasons. The FBI's work is a separate matter, and the public interest in understanding how a suspected Chinese intelligence operation reached into a sitting congressman's office does not disappear because a committee moved on.
And while Swalwell campaigns for governor from luxury estates, the voters of California may want to know what the FBI learned about the foreign operative who helped raise money for the man now asking for their trust.
Swalwell's own words set the standard he now refuses to meet. He demanded "every single word" of the Mueller report. He called classified-document handling "consciousness of guilt." He accused the White House of a "cover-up" for resisting disclosure. He wanted the Epstein files released immediately and in full, victims and all.
Now his lawyers are threatening the FBI director with a lawsuit for considering the release of files about Chinese infiltration of American elections, files that happen to include a probe into Swalwell himself.
Transparency, it turns out, was never the principle. It was the weapon. And weapons get put away when they point in the wrong direction.
