Eric Swalwell wants California voters to believe the Chinese spy scandal that has trailed him for years is nothing more than political noise. But fresh details about more than $300,000 in campaign-funded legal payments are making that case harder to sell.
The Democratic congressman and gubernatorial frontrunner broke his silence on the Christine Fang affair in a podcast interview shared with the California Post, dismissing years of questions as "lies and bullshit." Around the same time, the New York Post reported that his campaign committee, Swalwell for Congress, spent $305,000 between 2016 and 2023 on unspecified "legal services" from Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass, a San Francisco law firm specializing in civil litigation and white-collar criminal defense, not election law.
For a man who insists he did nothing wrong, that is a lot of money flowing to criminal defense lawyers over a lot of years.
The story begins long before Swalwell's current run for governor. Christine Fang, also known as Fang Fang, was a student at California State University East Bay who developed what Axios called "extensive" ties with Swalwell when he was still a member of the Dublin city council. She bundled donations for his 2014 reelection campaign and recommended staff for his congressional office.
Those were not casual political connections. As National Review reported, Fang helped place at least one intern in Swalwell's office. U.S. officials determined her purpose was to cultivate connections with rising American officials to later influence policy related to China. She was, by the assessment of U.S. intelligence, a suspected Chinese intelligence operative targeting political up-and-comers, and Swalwell was among her most significant targets.
Federal investigators gave Swalwell a "defensive" briefing around 2015. He says he cooperated. He cut off contact with Fang. She left for Beijing amid an FBI investigation. Those basic facts are not in dispute.
What remains in dispute is how much Swalwell knew, when he knew it, and why the questions keep following him.
Fang's operation was not small. Just the News reported that investigators examined her ties not only to Swalwell but to others in his office. "There were concerns about who else in his office she was close to," one intelligence official told the outlet. Another official described her network bluntly: "These were deeply cast nets."
U.S. officials cited by Axios said Fang cultivated sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors. She helped raise funds for Swalwell early in his career and became acquainted with his family. The scope of her effort, spanning roughly 2011 to 2015, as the Washington Examiner detailed, went well beyond a single fundraiser or intern placement.
Swalwell has never answered whether his relationship with Fang was romantic. He refused to discuss it with Politico. He has refused to discuss it with most reporters who have asked.
In January 2015, Swalwell was assigned a seat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, one of the most sensitive posts in Congress. The defensive briefing from the FBI came around the same time. He was not immediately removed from the committee.
In his podcast interview, Swalwell leaned hard on two claims: that the FBI cleared him and that the whole thing is a political hit job. "The air was cleared immediately by the FBI when there was even a suggestion of wrongdoing," he said. He added: "The FBI put out two statements... saying, 'all he did was help us when we identified somebody who might not be who they are presenting themselves as.'"
He blamed Kevin McCarthy, who ordered a House Ethics Committee investigation after becoming Speaker in 2021. "Kevin McCarthy wanted to create a thing," Swalwell said. "There's nothing I can do if someone is just trying to do the president's bidding."
The House ethics committee ultimately found no wrongdoing on Swalwell's part. Swalwell treats that as the final word.
But the ethics committee finding did not address every lingering question, including the $305,000 in campaign payments.
The campaign spending records show individual payments to Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass ranging from $250 to more than $36,000, spread across seven years. The payments were listed as "legal services" with no further detail.
A Swalwell campaign spokesperson told KCRA the payments were for legal guidance because President Donald Trump launched "retaliatory investigations" that put the congressman's "family and staff at risk." Attorney Rees Morgan, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer at the firm, confirmed his role to KCRA:
"I was retained as outside counsel to provide legal guidance to the congressman's office, ensuring staff remained fully compliant with applicable laws and prepared for potential contact from politically motivated actors."
Read that again. A white-collar criminal defense attorney was retained, for seven years, to keep Swalwell's staff "fully compliant with applicable laws." That phrasing does not describe routine campaign legal work. It describes someone bracing for trouble.
If Swalwell truly did nothing wrong, if the FBI cleared him as completely as he claims, why did his campaign fund a criminal defense lawyer for the better part of a decade? The campaign blames Trump. But the payments started in 2016, before any investigation tied to the Trump administration. They continued through 2023. That timeline does not fit a story about partisan retaliation. It fits a story about a congressman who needed serious legal help for a serious problem, and used donor money to pay for it.
The latest flare-up came when Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy posted a photo of Swalwell with Fang and wrote: "Call me crazy I like my politicians not to get tricked my foreign spies." Portnoy also jabbed: "Hey Eric I'd never heard of you but quick Google search said you were literally removed from House Intelligence Committee for having your office infiltrated by a Chinese spy named Fang Fang."
Swalwell's response was to brush it off. "Independent folks have said enough on this, and for me, defamation is the highest form of flattery," he said. He called the scrutiny something that "comes from being in the arena."
That posture, treating every question as a smear, every critic as a partisan, has become Swalwell's default. The Washington Times noted years ago that the episode should prompt stronger counterintelligence awareness. Daniel N. Hoffman wrote at the time that Swalwell was reportedly "shocked" when the FBI told him Fang was a suspected spy. Hoffman even argued Swalwell should not lose his intelligence committee seat, but stressed the episode exposed real vulnerabilities in how foreign operatives target American politicians.
Swalwell has never engaged with those vulnerabilities in any serious public way. He has not explained how a suspected Chinese intelligence operative got close enough to bundle his campaign donations, place staff in his office, and meet his family. He has not explained why he needed a white-collar defense attorney on retainer for seven years if the matter was truly resolved.
Swalwell is now considered the Democratic frontrunner for California governor. The Fang saga has dogged his campaign, and the fresh details about legal payments give it new weight. His pattern of dodging scrutiny while campaigning is well-documented. So is the growing list of political vulnerabilities, from residency challenges in the governor's race to questions about donations tied to CCP-linked entities.
And the China connections go back further than Fang Fang alone. A resurfaced 2013 photo showing Swalwell with a senior Chinese diplomat has added another layer to the picture of a politician whose orbit kept intersecting with Beijing's interests.
Swalwell's office told Axios years ago that he "long ago, provided information about this person, whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn't seen in nearly six years, to the FBI." That statement, echoed by Breitbart's reporting at the time, was meant to close the book. But the book keeps opening to new pages.
The FBI may have cleared Swalwell of passing classified information. The ethics committee may have found no formal violation. Those findings matter. But they do not explain $305,000 in campaign money routed to criminal defense lawyers over seven years. They do not explain why the man who wants to run the largest state in the union still cannot give a straight answer about what happened with Christine Fang.
Voters who want a governor they can trust deserve better than "defamation is the highest form of flattery." They deserve answers, or at least a candidate who stops pretending the questions are the problem.
