House Democrats killed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (D-CA) resolution to force Rep. Eric Swalwell (R-CA) off of the House Intelligence Committee.
The House voted 218-200 Thursday night to table or kill the resolution.nThere were three Republicans who voted present, Michael Guest (R-MS), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), and David Joyce (R-OH).
Last week Breitbart News reported, after Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) reappointed Swalwell to the Intelligence Committee, McCarthy was going to put forth a resolution to force Swalwell off his Intelligence Committee assignment. This came after a report alleged Swalwell had a relationship with a Chinese spy.
This was another attempt by the Minority Leader to hold Swalwell accountable for the reported ties between him and Chinese national Christine Fang.
The resolution McCarthy authored noted Swalwell “has not denied public reporting that a suspected Chinese intelligence operative helped raise money for Representative Swalwell’s political campaigns and facilitated the potential assignment of interns into Representative Swalwell’s offices.”
The previous report from Axios in December revealed a years-long political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015. It showed a suspected Chinese spy developed extensive ties with Swalwell. The Chinese national named “Fang Fang” or “Christine Fang” targeted “up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage.”
According to Axios, Fang even fundraised for Swalwell and placed at least one intern in his office:
Fang took part in fundraising activity for Swalwell’s 2014 re-election campaign, according to a Bay Area political operative and a current U.S. intelligence official. Swalwell’s office was directly aware of these activities on its behalf, the political operative said. That same political operative, who witnessed Fang fundraising on Swalwell’s behalf, found no evidence of illegal contributions.
Federal Election Commission records don’t indicate Fang herself made donations, which are prohibited from foreign nationals. Fang helped place at least one intern in Swalwell’s office, according to those same two people, and interacted with Swalwell at multiple events over the course of several years.
A statement from Swalwell’s office provided to Axios said: ‘Rep. Swalwell, 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. To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story.’
On Tuesday, Swalwell went on MSNBC’s The Beat, to comment on McCarthy’s push to remove him from the House Intelligence Committee.
“We helped the FBI. I chose America,” Swalwell said. “I honored my oath to national security by not talking about a top-secret case, but the three individuals in the intelligence community who leaked this and Kevin McCarthy, who continues to politicize this, they are not.”