The Media Research Center has long been obsessed with discredited claims of Rep. Eric Swalwell’s involvement with a woman who turned out to be a Chinese spy. Even though Swalwell was cleared of wrongdoing by the House Ethics Committee and his never been credibly accused of wrongdoing in the relationship, the MRC continued to flog baseless claims over it anyway — and nearly two years later, it’s still doing it. David Milliken huffed in a March 25 post:
If any more proof was needed of how un-self-aware MSNBC really was, Charles Coleman Jr. rose to the occasion while filling in for Monday night’s The 11th Hour. To discuss a reported national security breach of the Trump administration, Coleman ostensibly interviewed Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA.), but in fact just let Swalwell mouth off at will, while completely ignoring the fact that Swalwell himself had been the subject of an embarrassing national security scandal.
[…]What Coleman completely neglected to mention, though, was that while on that committee Swalwell himself had become embroiled in a national security scandal when it turned out that he was dating a woman named Fang Fang, who was exposed as a Chinese spy.
Milliken continued his bogus narrative in a March 30 post:
In their eagerness to play up the recent Signal chat affair for all they possibly could, CNN News Central made what just might have been the worst available choice on Capitol Hill to pontificate on national security. On Friday, they invited Rep. Eric Swalwell (D- CA), to do so, ignoring the fact that he himself had been the subject of a humiliating national security scandal, and also revealed a hypocritical double standard regarding the use of Signal specifically for sensitive communications.
[…]Swalwell had indeed served on the House Intelligence Committee, but the elephant in the room that Berman completely ignored was that while on that committee Swalwell himself had been responsible for a high-profile national security breach, when it turned out that he was dating a woman named Fang Fang who was exposed as a spy for Communist China.
MIlliken huffed further that “Berman seemed completely oblivious to the irony of someone like Swalwell feeling entitled to run his mouth about ‘lack of accountability'” — in fact, the the House Ethics Committee cleared him, meaning he was accountable.
Curtis Houck tried to revive the dead story in an April 8 post:
On Friday and Tuesday, CBS Mornings Plus covered a newly revealed policy change during the Biden administration and kept in place under Team Trump that federal government workers stationed in China are barred from engaging in romantic relationships with Chinese citizens out of fear of spies engaging in honeypotting, or seducing Americans to elicit information pertinent to our national security.
Incredibly, Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and his long-rumored tryst with Chinese spy Fang Fang never came up in CBS’s nearly eight minutes (7:45) of coverage.
Incredibly, Houck failed to tell his readers that Swalwell was cleared of wrongdoing, just as Milliken failed.