Kevin McCarthy Calls to Remove Eric Swalwell From House Intelligence Committee After Affair With Chinese Spy
Richard Moorhead
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Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has called for Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell to be removed from the House Intelligence Committee, following revelations that exposed Swalwell’s affair with a woman suspected of operating in California as a Chinese spy.
A group of House Republicans signed a letter last week calling for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to remove Swalwell from his seat on the committee, citing his lack of judgement and vulnerability to Chinese intelligence. Christine Fang carried on intimate relationships with several California politicians and mayors of midwestern cities from 2011 and 2015, abruptly leaving the country in 2015. US intelligence now believes she was acting in the capacity of Chinese state intelligence. Fang acted as a financial bundler for Swalwell and placed at least two interns in his office during their relationship.
McCarthy alluded to confidential elements of an intelligence briefing he had received regarding Swalwell’s relationship with Fang in demanding his removal from the sensitive committee. The left-wing congressman has sought to dismiss criticism of his integrity, claiming that the exposé of his relationship with Fang represents a plot on the part of the Trump administration.
“It was just the Speaker Nancy Pelosi and myself. It was a very thorough briefing. No one that was in that room could walk out and say Eric Swalwell should be on the Intel Committee. … They had a briefing before in 2015, and I don’t know what that briefing was like compared to this one, but it could not have been the same. The one answer that I got out of that briefing was there is no way Eric Swalwell should continue to serve on the Intel Committee,” McCarthy told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
“And the challenge here is the leaders of both parties are the only people who select to go on the Intel Committee. That is why today, Maria, what I’m going to request, that every single member on the House Intelligence Committee gets the exact same briefing from the FBI that I did, because if this individual is sitting on this committee, Eric Swalwell, they’ve got to know the background of what has gone on. I can’t talk about the classified part, but you know what’s out there in the press.”
Swalwell has ironically accused President Donald Trump of being a “traitor” on the basis of discredited Russia conspiracy theories, an accusation that now appears embarrassing for the man caught literally in bed with a likely Chinese intelligence agent. Swalwell never disclosed any of his contacts with Christine Fang to the public.
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