Files declassified by President Donald Trump on former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and the Chinese spy known as Fang Fang reveal that the disgraced ex-congressman admitted to the FBI he had a sexual relationship with her — and that the bureau attempted at one point to recruit her without her knowledge.
The documents prove that the United States government was aware of the suspicious relationship between Swalwell and Fang since at least 2014, years before Axios broke the story in 2020.
A zip file of documents, labeled “Rusty Thumbs” after the FBI’s codename for Fang, was published on the White House Election Integrity webpage on Monday along with the following synopsis:
The FBI developed evidence that a Chinese woman with direct ties to that country’s intelligence service had potentially compromised a Democratic congressman from California with sex, foreign interns and illicit donations while she was being recruited to become a bureau informant a decade ago, according to bombshell memos that expose another threat to America’s political system from Beijing.
The files chronicling the relationship between Rep. Eric Swalwell and the Chinese national Fang Fang – also known by her English name Christine Fang – were declassified by President Donald Trump and released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force as part of a broader effort to unmask foreign threats to U.S. political and election systems.
According to the explosive FBI files, the bureau had opened a full-scale investigation into Swalwell over the allegations that Fang, a suspected intelligence operative for the Chinese government, had been facilitating campaign contributions for him in exchange for placing interns in his office. At one stage of the operation, the objective was to gather enough evidence to arrest and charge both Swalwell and Fang, who had ties to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).
Multiple witnesses described their interactions with Fang to the FBI, including a winery owner who said that Fang told him to “just bring his checkbook” to a campaign event for Swalwell because she would reimburse him, and a wealthy restaurant franchise owner who said that Fang wanted his contribution to Swalwell attributed to her.
The FBI’s case, codenamed “Freshman Fifteen,” was opened as a “Sensitive Investigative Matter” due to one of its subjects being a sitting member of congress at the time. In June 2014, an FBI memorandum stated that the possible violations included bribery of public officials, conspiracy, excessive campaign contributions, prohibited foreign-national contributions and contributions through conduits.
In a May 2015 FBI interview, Swalwell said he first met Fang in 2012 when they were seated at the same table at an event celebrating the Chinese-American community. In the interview, he described Fang as a “striking individual,” and admitted that he met her for a drink a couple of weeks later.
After that drink, he said that their relationship became sexual.
According to Swalwell, he had “physical relations with Fang on a handful of occasions,” although the relationship did not become romantic. He said their last sexual encounter was in March 2015, just a couple of months before he sat down for that interview.
While he described the relationship as casual, he stated that he believed that Fang wanted something more romantic.
“Investigation has revealed that Fang Fang, a Chinese foreign national residing in the United States, is the facilitator of a scheme to trade internships in Congressman Eric Swalwell’s Congressional office in return for campaign contributions,” an FBI memorandum stated.
The memorandum noted that “in at least two cases,” Fang used middlemen in order to conceal herself as a foreign-national source of political donations.
When Swalwell was interviewed by the FBI again in March 2016, he brought along legal counsel. He again admitted to once having an ongoing physical relationship with Fang, but reiterated that it never advanced into formal dating.
The FBI records also stated that Fang was introduced to Swalwell by the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association (APAPA), with Swalwell telling the FBI that anyone Fang recommended for an internship with his office was effectively coming through APAPA.
One of these referred interns who worked on Swalwell’s campaign was a Chinese national Fang referred to as her sister, though they were not related.
Another Fang referral, who was a student at University of California, Davis, was given an internship in Swalwell’s office in Washington, DC.
Fang also extended multiple invitations to Swalwell and his family, including his father, to visit China. The Swalwells declined these invitations, with the then-congressman telling the FBI that he did not want to go unless it was an official trip sanctioned by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
However, the FBI had been trying to recruit Fang as an intelligence asset around 2013, before it began investigating her political connections.
The newly-declassified documents revealed that the bureau had given Fang the codename “Rusty Thumbs,” and discovered that her parents were “known MSS intelligence officers.”
Fang reportedly admitted to a redacted FBI source that her parents worked for a Chinese government department “akin to the US Secret Service,” stating that her mother held a higher rank than her father but did not discuss specifics.
The same witness told the FBI that he got the impression that Fang was also a Chinese spy, saying she would often disappear without explanation.
Despite initially sniffing her out as a potential source, the bureau eventually shifted to trying to pin down Fang for her alleged criminal activity.
The FBI searched Fang’s California residence on two back-to-back occasions in April 2015, with the records showing that agents seized material including business cards, documents, and a U.S.-Asia Institute name badge reading “Ms. FANG Fang, Congressman Eric Swalwell.”
Fang appeared to know that the bureau was closing in on her. The winery owner reported that she asked him to meet for dinner, telling him that she was going to go back to China and asking him to help make financial arrangements to cover her June 2015 rent payment and to find someone to take over her car lease.
Fang also told the winery owner that the FBI had questioned her about her connections to Swalwell, and would probably contact him too.
Fang got on a flight to China shortly after that, and never returned to the United States. The last known public photo of her was reportedly taken in a Beijing restaurant in 2024 with Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of Chinese state media outlet the Global Times:
A February 2017 FBI memorandum stated that the investigation had “not found violations of federal corruption statutes perpetrated by Congressman Eric Swalwell.” According to the investigators, they did not find evidence “of a quid pro quo exchange between Fang and the Congressman or his office.”
However, the bureau’s conclusion on Fang was a different story.
The FBI’s closing records stated that they did find evidence that she had violated several federal laws, after which the State Department prohibited her from coming back to the United States.
However, a May 2017 closing memorandum from the FBI states that it was decided that prosecuting Fang was “non-viable due to national security reasons.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.