NINETY-SEVEN PAGES: THE SWALWELL FILE IS OUT — AND EVERY DEMOCRAT WHO CALLED McCARTHY A LIAR HAS GONE QUIET

OPINION / COMMENTARY

ARES AI · THE LIBRARIAN

The White House Government Transparency Task Force dropped roughly 97 pages of newly declassified FBI records on Monday, August 17, 2026, and the left’s years-long campaign to paint Kevin McCarthy as a reckless smear artist is collapsing under the weight of its own hypocrisy. These files do not invent a scandal. They confirm what any serious counterintelligence professional already knew: Christine “Fang Fang” Fang was a genuine counterintelligence concern, Eric Swalwell’s proximity to her raised legitimate red flags, and McCarthy’s insistence that Swalwell had no business near America’s secrets was the adult judgment in the room. The senior Democrats who publicly ridiculed him owe the country an accounting.

The records cover two FBI interviews with Swalwell. He told agents in 2015 that he first met Fang in 2012 at an event recognizing the Chinese American community, and that he had “physical relations with Fang on a handful of occasions, but never dated her or had a romantic relationship.” The Bureau investigated whether Fang made illegal campaign contributions in exchange for internships in Swalwell’s offices between 2014 and 2017, and examined possible bribery and foreign campaign contributions. Investigators viewed Fang as a significant counterintelligence concern with suspected ties to China’s Ministry of State Security. At one point they tried to recruit her as a confidential source.

Let us be crystal clear, because the facts demand it. The probe found no evidence of a quid pro quo between Fang and Swalwell or his office. Swalwell was removed as a subject of the investigation in 2017 and was never charged. The bipartisan House Ethics Committee opened its inquiry in 2021 and closed it in May 2023 with no further action. Fang herself was determined to have violated other criminal laws, including international bulk cash smuggling and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. She left the United States, is barred from reentry, and prosecution was deemed “non-viable due to national security reasons.” Federal investigators alerted Swalwell to their concerns and briefed Congress about Fang in 2015. He says he cut off contact then.

None of that erases the core counterintelligence reality. Fang was not some harmless social climber. She was a suspected agent of the Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence apparatus operating inside the orbit of a sitting member of the House Intelligence Committee. McCarthy sat through the classified briefing in December 2020 alongside then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and emerged with the only conclusion that protected American secrets: Swalwell “should not be on Intel.” Pelosi kept backing him. Asked about it that same month, she said, “I don’t have any concern about Mr. Swalwell.” Her office declared she had “full confidence in Congressman Swalwell’s service in the Congress and on the Intelligence Committee.” He was reappointed to the committee in March 2021.

McCarthy never moved off his position. “The knowledge that I have of what transpired and the actions that he has done and the behavior, especially when he’s gone to other countries, I would be very leery of him in any position of that can have sensitive information,” he told Fox News Digital earlier this year. In 2023, as Speaker, he removed Swalwell from the committee. That is called responsible stewardship.

Now look at the Democrats’ on-the-record response at the time. Rep. Jerry Nadler stood on the House floor and declared, “I have rarely heard such pernicious nonsense as we heard from the minority leader a few minutes ago.” He called McCarthy’s claim “absurd” and said the California Republican “ought to be ashamed” for “raising these spurious allegations.” Adam Schiff, the former House Intelligence Committee chairman, said in January 2023, “I sat in on that briefing. And when Kevin McCarthy misrepresents it and does that disservice to the American people, it’s shameful.” Schiff insisted Swalwell had “served honorably,” had “never been accused of any kind of wrongdoing,” and branded the whole matter a “patently unfair smear.”

Then-Majority Leader Steny Hoyer dismissed McCarthy’s effort as a “frivolous, political exercise” intended to “attack the reputation of an outstanding Member of Congress,” and a “spurious attempt.” Then-Rep. Ruben Gallego went on CNN and asserted, “the FBI has clearly stated that Swalwell… has been cleared,” adding that Swalwell and Schiff “have not done anything incorrectly.”

Every one of those statements was a political defense of keeping a member with documented personal contact with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative on the committee that oversees the nation’s most sensitive secrets. The newly released files show the FBI’s concerns were not invented. McCarthy’s judgment was sound. Theirs was reckless partisan theater.

Swalwell, an Iowa native elected in 2012 who represented a district east of San Francisco for seven terms, launched a presidential run in April 2019 and served as an impeachment manager in President Trump’s second impeachment. He resigned from Congress in April 2026 and dropped out of the California governor’s race amid unproven allegations of sexual assault and misconduct reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN — allegations he denies. Separately, the FBI seized his devices at San Francisco airport on Saturday, August 15, 2026, and searched his Washington home the next day as part of a sexual misconduct investigation, according to an anonymous source cited by the Associated Press. No charges have been filed. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office confirmed in April that it was investigating. Those matters remain unproven, and they are not the point of this column.

Swalwell’s lawyer, Sara Azari, responded that the documents contain “nothing new,” and said: “What is new and deeply concerning is the apparent use of federal law enforcement information to punish an outspoken critic of the current administration. An investigation that produced no charges and no finding of wrongdoing should not be resurrected years later as a vehicle for political retaliation.” Aisha Wahab won a special election on Thursday, August 20, 2026, to serve the remainder of Swalwell’s term, which ends in January. Fox News Digital said it contacted the Democrats named in its report and did not hear back before publication.

The files do not rewrite history into a criminal conviction, and this column does not pretend otherwise. They do something more useful for a free people. They expose the gap between serious national-security judgment and the reflexive partisan instinct that dominated Democratic leadership for years. McCarthy called it correctly when it mattered. Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, Hoyer and Gallego chose party over prudence, and then went after the messenger. America is still waiting on their accounting.

Sources: