Eric Swalwell Floats Fang Fang Conspiracy Theories While Not Denying Classified Intelligence Report Existence

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) is now floating conspiracy theories about how a Breitbart News story on the existence of a classified report detailing the explicit nature of his relationship with Chinese spy Fang Fang came out—but he is not denying the intelligence report exists.

The saga begins as follows: Back in late July, Breitbart News published an explosive exclusive investigation quoting multiple sources including a former senior national security official and a former senior external adviser to intelligence community leadership revealing the existence of a classified report circulated among intelligence community officials that detailed the nature of Swalwell’s relationship with Fang Fang, a Chinese spy. That she and Swalwell were entangled was long public based off previous reports, but this story revealed the intelligence report that collected a bunch of these details.

Swalwell did not respond to requests for comment for that original story, nor did the White House or Office of the Director of National Intelligence. President Joe Biden, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, or anyone else with original classification authority could order the declassification of the Swalwell report, as Breitbart News reported in that original story.

After the original story published, Fox News host Tucker Carlson did a segment on it—inviting on Breitbart News editor in chief Alex Marlow to discuss it—in which he viciously criticized Swalwell.

Marlow was equally vicious in his Swalwell critique, saying that while “we knew Fang Fang was infiltrating operations within the United States, various offices and having relationships with up-and-coming politicians before she abruptly left the country a few years ago, and we knew she had an intimate relationship with Swalwell. We just didn’t know the extent to which it was intimate.”

“Well, now, apparently, we do, according to this report, which, as of now, Swalwell hasn’t denied,” Marlow continued. “Tucker, this is deep penetration inside the Swalwell operation by the Chinese government.”

That was the end of the latest part of the Fang Fang saga until now, when Swalwell and his staff pushed a story to the Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani in which the congressman literally theorizes about the origins of the story—all without denying the existence of the very classified report that Breitbart News originally revealed.

Apparently, unrelated to the Breitbart News investigation, Swalwell and his staff had a dustup with Carlson’s son Buckley Carlson—a communications staffer for Republican Study Committee chairman Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN)—in the days before that story ran.

Tani’s story opens with this:

Several days before Breitbart News ran a story alleging a sexual affair between Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and a Chinese spy, the congressman’s top aide received an unusual email from a fellow Hill staffer.

It was Buckley Carlson, a communications director for up-and-coming Republican Rep. Jim Banks and son of Tucker Carlson, arguably the most powerful person in right-wing media and one of Swalwell’s biggest antagonists.

According to Swalwell communications director Jessica Gail, Buckley was reeling from the fact that the congressman had just days earlier referenced him in a tweet bashing his Fox News host father. As a consequence, Gail said, Buckley (not to be confused with Tucker’s brother Buckley Carlson) intimated to her that he was working with a news outlet to push a story on an alleged tryst between Swalwell, who is married with children, and a Chinese infiltrator.

Several days later, a Breitbart article featuring the allegations received extensive coverage on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News primetime program, including a photoshopped graphic of Swalwell in bed with the suspected spy.

There is no reason to believe this is inaccurate in the sense that Buckley Carlson—Tucker’s son—probably did actually do what is reported here. But that does not have anything to do with the Breitbart News story, which makes no mention of any congressional staffer being any source for the story. In fact, there are two main sources quoted on background—and their descriptions are fairly clear. One is described as a “former senior national security official familiar with the details of the report,” and the other is described as a “second source familiar with the report’s details, a former external senior adviser to Intelligence Community (IC) leadership.”

There is no way that Buckley Carlson—however talented a communications staffer he may be—fits the description of either of those people. Buckley Carlson is a junior press staffer on Capitol Hill, and while yes he is Tucker Carlson’s son he has never worked as a “senior national security official” or as an “external senior adviser to Intelligence Community (IC) leadership.” Maybe he will one day, but as of the publication of that report—and this one—he has not ever met that description.

While Tani’s story seems focused more broadly on Carlson’s ongoing feud with Swalwell than just on this particular Breitbart News story on the classified intelligence report, Swalwell himself seems overly obsessed with what he thinks is some big conspiracy by Carlson and his son, Breitbart News, and Republicans in Congress out to get him and his family. In fact, Tani is not the first person that Swalwell ordered his staff to plant this story with. At least two other establishment media publications turned down the story after initially looking into it—but upon review of Swalwell’s shoddy narrative they did not print his theories.

Nonetheless, he is a Democrat U.S. Congressman so it is unsurprising he eventually found a willing patsy in Tani to launder his conspiracy theories. Swalwell himself went on record in this story to float his conspiracy theory which even Tani seems to have expressed some hesitation about in the way he couched the quotes from Swalwell on the matter as the congressman “suggesting” something along the lines of a grand overarching “connection”:

On July 26, Breitbart News, a far-right outlet, ran a story claiming a report had circulated among the “U.S. intelligence community” detailing a scandalous affair between Fang and Swalwell, a House intelligence committee member. Carlson gave it major airplay, including the photoshopped imagery of Swalwell in bed with the presumed Chinese spy.

“Father and son are certainly allowed to talk about who they perceive as a common enemy,” Swalwell said before suggesting a connection between the Carlsons and the Breitbart article. “But when the son works for the House of Representatives and is doing his father’s bidding on official House email and at his desk on his official phone, that crosses the line. The House of Representatives is not supposed to be air support for Fox News.”

So, Swalwell clearly thinks there is some vast right-wing conspiracy out to get him. But the ultimate irony here is that he has in his urgent fervor to get someone to print this theory about the Carlsons and the Breitbart News story made a critical mistake: Swalwell has not denied the existence of the intelligence report, instead just challenging how the story came out about it.

He still technically has not confirmed its existence either, but he took a huge step in that direction by rushing to everyone he could to try to push this story until he finally got someone who would print it for him—thereby actually drawing even more attention to himself and the still-classified report on the nature of his relationship with Fang Fang.

Asked to react to Swalwell’s latest move, including his refusal to deny the existence of the classified intelligence report, one of the two intelligence sources familiar with the details of the Swalwell-Fang Fang report from the first Breitbart News that Swalwell is clearly reeling right now.

“As Kabul falls and Americans are slaughtered by Islamic terrorists, Eric Swalwell — a member of the House Intel Committee — is spending his time shopping stories to gossip rags,” that source said.

“This is all white noise. As the Chinese Communist Party jumps in bed with the Taliban, the questions that need to be answered immediately are: Did Eric Swalwell sleep with a Chinese communist spy? What do the Chinese Communists have on Swalwell and how much of a national security threat is this?”

Swalwell’s office, meanwhile, has not replied to a followup request for comment from Breitbart News on why the congressman is not denying the existence of the classified intelligence report on his relationship with Fang Fang—and has not answered whether he supports calls for Biden, Haines, and others to declassify it so the public can read it.

Interestingly, Swalwell is despite all of this still a sitting member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), per decisions from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and HPSCI chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to keep him there. Pelosi and Schiff, both of whom would because of their positions in congressional leadership have access to the very Swalwell-Fang Fang intelligence report in question, are clearly looking the other way on this.