York: The Democrats have an Eric Swalwell problem
House Democratic leaders are trying to keep the espionage scandal surrounding Intelligence Committee member Rep. Eric Swalwell under tight control. But it's going to be an uphill battle.
Republicans are pushing harder and harder to learn more about Swalwell's relationship with Chinese spy Christine Fang.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is demanding the FBI brief all members of the Intelligence Committee on what the bureau knows about the relationship. That relationship began sometime after Fang arrived in the U.S. in 2011, before Swalwell was elected to Congress, and continued through 2015, by which time Swalwell had won election to the House, and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi picked him for a coveted spot on the Intelligence Committee.
U.S. authorities had Fang under surveillance, and apparently picked up information about her having some sort of personal relationship with a member of Congress - Swalwell. In 2015, the FBI met with Swalwell - again, a member of the Intelligence Committee - to inform him that Fang was a spy. Swalwell says he immediately cut off all contact with Fang, who quickly left the U.S. in mid-2015.
In the next year, 2016, Swalwell started accusing the Donald Trump campaign of collusion with Russia. He proposed a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged influence of Russian spy agencies with then-candidate Trump and top members of his campaign. As 2016 and 2017 went on, Swalwell became one of the leading voices attacking President Trump and his Republican defenders.
Now, Republicans look back on those days and are amazed that Swalwell would play the role of attack dog when he himself had been in close contact with a foreign spy.
Swalwell was enormously interested in, perhaps obsessed with, the Steele dossier, which, among other false allegations, spread the story that private citizen Donald Trump had watched as prostitutes performed a kinky sex act in a Moscow hotel room in 2013 as Russian intelligence services filmed the entire episode. In November 2017, when the Intelligence Committee interviewed Keith Schiller, a bodyguard who accompanied Trump to Moscow, Swalwell asked question after question about the hotel room story. He never got anywhere, because there was no story to tell.
For the GOP, the important thing now is to learn exactly what the FBI knows about the Stalwell-Fang case. Last week, McCarthy received an FBI briefing on the matter - the FBI had actually canceled the briefing twice before finally consenting. But the briefing was just for McCarthy and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who were the only two members in the room. The information was classified, and both are forbidden from discussing what was said, which helps Pelosi keep a lid on the matter. But McCarthy made no secret of his belief that the Swalwell case is a very big deal.
"One thing that was fundamentally answered - he should not be on Intel," McCarthy said after the briefing. In a later interview with Fox News' Martha MacCallum, McCarthy said, "I can't tell you about what [was in the briefing], but I can tell you this. What I learned today, and anyone who was in that room with me would never allow Swalwell to be on the Intel Committee, or to continue to be on it."
If any leaders knew about the Swalwell information earlier, McCarthy said, "he should not be serving." That was a direct shot at Pelosi, who had picked the ambitious young congressman for the committee.
The next step for Republicans is to get the FBI to brief all the members of the Intelligence Committee. If more members, including members of Pelosi's party, learn the facts, there will be increasing pressure on Pelosi to do something about it.
It's unclear when that FBI briefing will occur. Perhaps Pelosi will try to block it. Perhaps she can delay things for a while. But with a diminished majority next year, the speaker will have other fights to fight. At some point, the Eric Swalwell story will come out.
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