Eric Swalwell helped impeach Trump twice and now he wants to be California’s next Governor.
But he made a big mistake and lawyered up to stop anyone seeing what's really in his record.
And their scramble to stop Kash Patel from showing America exactly what the FBI found backfired bigly.
How Christine Fang and Her Chinese Spy Operation Got Inside Swalwells Campaign
This story starts in 2012, when a Chinese national named Christine Fang showed up at a student event at California State University East Bay and met a young Dublin city councilman named Eric Swalwell.
Fang wasn't a student looking for a photo op.
She was a suspected agent of China's Ministry of State Security – running what FBI counterintelligence officials later called a "long game" operation to identify rising American politicians and cultivate them before they got powerful.
She found exactly what she was looking for in Swalwell.
Over the next three years, Fang bundled donations for his 2014 congressional reelection campaign, placed an intern inside his congressional office, and built a close personal relationship with the man who would soon sit on the House Intelligence Committee.
In 2015, the FBI finally briefed Swalwell and told him what Fang actually was.
She fled the country shortly after – boarding a flight back to China and never returning – while Swalwell insisted he cut all contact and cooperated fully with investigators.
No criminal charges were filed, and a House Ethics Committee probe that opened in 2021 closed two years later without any action.
Swalwell declared the matter closed.
Kash Patel Is Pushing to Release the Fang Fang Files Anyway
Patel – who named Swalwell in a 2023 book called Government Gangsters listing Trump's political enemies – dispatched agents to the FBI's San Francisco office to review and redact the decade-old investigative files in preparation for public release.
Releasing records from an investigation that produced no charges is a step the Justice Department almost never takes – the bureau's own internal policies prohibit it in most circumstances.
Patel moved forward anyway.
Within days, Swalwell held a press conference insisting the case is "closed" and called Patel a "temporary employee" engaged in a "horrendous abuse of power."
His lawyers – including Norm Eisen, who helped manage Trump's impeachment proceedings – then sent Patel a formal cease-and-desist letter demanding the FBI confirm in writing within three days that the files would stay sealed.
The letter warned that releasing the records would violate the federal Privacy Act of 1974, Swalwell's First Amendment rights, and the Justice Department's own standing regulations.
"Your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability," the letter reads.
The FBI's response was brief: the bureau "prepares documents for numerous different reasons," a spokesperson said.
Patel hasn’t done much right at the FBI but he ain’t wrong here.
He didn't blink at Swalwell’s threats.
The California Governor Race That Made This File a Target
Here's what makes this story different from 2020, when Fang's operation first became public.
Swalwell is a frontrunner in California's crowded governor's race.
He is polling at the top of the Democratic field.
The primary is June 2.
Early voting begins in May.
But where Swalwell messed up in dispatching his lawyers is forgetting it’s a "jungle" primary.
He walked right into a trap – the Streisand Effect, where trying to hide or suppress information unintentionally backfires and instead makes it widespread.
Democrat voters may have never cared about Fang. But independents, centrist Democrats, and even some Republicans, probably forgot.
And he just brought it to their attention.
"It's not lost on me that we're 34 days until Californians start voting," Swalwell said on CNN.
His lawyers went further, accusing Patel of violating the DOJ's longstanding prohibition on taking public investigatory action against political candidates in the 60 days before an election.
The FBI hasn't confirmed whether the files will actually drop – or what's in them.
That uncertainty is the whole point.
California's Democrat field is so crowded that eight Democrats are fighting for the two spots that advance to November, and any scandal could scramble the entire race.
Swalwell's rivals – including billionaire Tom Steyer, who has already commissioned research into Swalwell's residency arrangements – are watching closely.
What Those Files Likely Contain
Nobody knows exactly what Kash Patel is sitting on.
But here's what is already public: Fang cultivated what multiple U.S. officials described as a personal relationship with Swalwell during those years – not merely a professional one.
A Capitol Hill source told The Federalist the relationship was sexual.
Swalwell has denied it.
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe briefed congressional intelligence committees on the full scope of Fang's influence operation, and that briefing was classified.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy removed Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee in January 2023 specifically over the national security risk posed by his history with Fang – citing the danger of giving someone with that background continued access to America's most sensitive secrets.
Think about what that actually means.
The man who sat on the House Intelligence Committee – with access to some of the nation's most classified secrets – had a Chinese spy fundraising for his campaign, placing an intern in his office, and building what multiple officials described as a personal relationship with him for three years before anyone told him to stop.
Now he's running to be governor of the most populous state in America.
And 34 days before Californians start voting, he's threatening to sue the FBI if it shows them what's in the file.
Swalwell doesn't get to demand transparency from everyone else and then hide behind a cease-and-desist when it's his turn.
California voters have three days to ask why the frontrunner is more afraid of his own FBI file than he is of losing the race.
Sources:
- Annie Gaus and Benjamin Brown, "Eric Swalwell escalates war with FBI chief Kash Patel over Fang Fang scandal," New York Post, March 30, 2026.
- "Lawyers for Rep. Swalwell demand that FBI director halt any plan to release old investigative file," Associated Press, March 30, 2026.
- Jonathan Swan and others, "How a suspected Chinese spy gained access to California politics," Axios, December 8, 2020.
- "Swalwell threatens FBI with legal action as Patel reportedly weighs 'Fang Fang' files release," Fox News, March 31, 2026.
- "Swalwell Lawyers Warn Kash Patel Over Chinese Spy Case Files," Newsweek, March 31, 2026.
- "Why Eric Swalwell Sent a Cease and Desist Letter to the FBI," Townhall, March 31, 2026.
- "From Fang-Fang to Residency Games: Eric Swalwell's Pattern of Bad Decisions," PJ Media, March 12, 2026.
