The FBI files are declassified. Eric Swalwell admitted having sex with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative — multiple times — while serving in Congress. The documents were released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force.

The operative was Christine Fang, known as Fang Fang, a Chinese national with suspected ties to China's Ministry of State Security. Her parents were identified by the FBI as known MSS intelligence officers. During a 2015 interview, Swalwell told agents he had "physical relations with Fang" on multiple occasions after first meeting her during his 2012 congressional campaign. One encounter, according to the files, began when she showed up at his door.

The story is stranger than most people knew.

Before the FBI opened a criminal investigation into Fang, agents were trying to recruit her as an intelligence asset. The bureau assigned her the code name "Rusty Thumbs" and used an undercover employee and a fictitious front company to develop the relationship. Fang signed a contractor agreement with that front company in June 2013. The recruitment effort ended just days before the FBI formally opened its campaign-finance investigation into her activities.

The formal probe launched March 17, 2014, under the code name "Freshman Fifteen." It examined three areas of potential criminal exposure.

First, the money. The files document at least four instances — twice in 2013 and twice in 2014 — in which Fang funneled illegal campaign donations to Swalwell by routing funds through American citizen conduits, concealing herself as the foreign source. The bureau caught Fang in the act: soliciting donations from a confidential source and promising personal reimbursement. An interim memo described Fang as the facilitator of a scheme to trade access to Swalwell and congressional internships for campaign contributions.

Second, the interns. Fang repeatedly referred individuals to Swalwell's campaign and his congressional office through an Asian American civic network. The FBI investigated whether those placements constituted a quid pro quo — staff positions and access exchanged for contributions from a Chinese national with suspected intelligence ties.

Third, the relationship itself. Swalwell was a sitting member of Congress with access to classified intelligence. Fang was connected to an apparatus whose parents the FBI had identified as MSS officers. The bureau's chosen name for the probe — "Freshman Fifteen" — captured what agents believed they were looking at.

The files are clear on one point: after multiple interviews, the FBI reclassified the investigation in February 2017, removed Swalwell as a subject, and found no federal statutory violation by the congressman. He cooperated with agents throughout and was never charged with a crime.

What the files document against Fang is a different matter entirely. Before closing the investigation, the bureau recorded evidence it believed supported possible violations across five categories: campaign-finance law, false statements, federal records, cash smuggling, and foreign-agent registration. The Justice Department declined to prosecute her on any of it.

Fang left the United States for China in 2015 after agents began interviewing people in her circle and searched her home. She has not returned.

Swalwell continued to serve on the House Intelligence Committee. https://rumble.com/v7eajqy-breaking-declassified-files-reveal-new-fbi-evidence-on-swalwell-and-fang-fa.html

For years the public debate compressed into two talking points: Swalwell's critics said he had been compromised, his defenders said the FBI never accused him of wrongdoing. Both were technically accurate. Both left out most of what actually happened.

The declassified record shows why. The FBI cleared Swalwell as a subject — but only after investigating a web of alleged foreign donations, sexual access, political placements, and suspected intelligence ties that Americans had never been allowed to see. The bureau first tried to recruit Fang as an asset. She signed a contract with an FBI front company. Days later, agents opened a criminal probe into her activities around the same congressman.

These documents were classified for over a decade. They are public now because the Trump administration chose to release them.

That is the accountability the previous administration chose not to provide.