Did Communist Spy Know That Rep. Swalwell Was Being Appointed to Intel Committee?

The Swalwell Saga keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. The Wall Street Journal tried to put the events down on paper but it’s still not adding up.

Forget the juicy details of Swalwell’s possible romantic involvement with a pretty young Communist spy. The real questions that need to be asked have more to do with national security than anything that might have happened in the bedroom between a United States congressman and Christine Fang, a Chinese national that the FBI says was spying for the Chinese Communist Party.

Swalwell says he met Ms. Fang in 2012. She worked as a fundraiser on his 2014 re-election campaign. And that’s when the fun begins.

Fang apparently had enough sway with Swalwell to name an intern to his Washington office. But the vital issue is when? The FBI says they briefed Swalwell on Fang’s possible ties to Chinese intelligence sometime around 2015. Swalwell was appointed to the intelligence committee in early January of that year. Speaker Pelosi says she and other congressional leaders were briefed on Fang in the spring of 2015.

Apparently, for a few months, Swalwell knew he may have been compromised but neglected to inform the Speaker of the House.

The first question we should be asking is how a backbench Democrat not only managed to wrangle a plum assignment to the intelligence committee but what possessed Speaker Pelosi to name him the ranking Democrat on the CIA oversight subcommittee.

At the time he was appointed to those prestigious posts, Swalwell had been in Congress for one term. It must have raised some eyebrows in the Democratic caucus at the time when this rookie got such choice postings.

Who whispered in Pelosi’s ear to appoint someone with no experience in oversight much less with the CIA?

Just a few weeks or months after being told by the FBI that he’d been duped into conducting some sort of relationship with a communist spy, a young backbencher in Congress was given a significant role overseeing the CIA?

Both Mr. Swalwell and the speaker need to explain who knew what and when about the Chinese infiltration of his political network and why many intelligence committee colleagues were not told, among other issues.

They must also address the process that led to Rep. Swalwell’s lead role among Democrats in overseeing the CIA. Who were the people who weighed in on the young congressman’s behalf when Mrs. Pelosi was preparing to hand out committee assignments? And don’t tell us it’s classified.

When several people are lying about the same thing, it’s nearly impossible to keep their stories straight. Both Swalwell and Pelosi need to come clean and lay out exactly what they knew, and when they knew it. They need to stop playing political games with national security and tell the American people what we need to know.